Visualisation, Subvocalisation and Reading

right so hello and welcome back to books and things and welcome to another video and welcome to what is probably going to be a bit of a ramble today we're going to be talking about what our imaginations do as we read we're going to be talking about subvocalization and visualization and like how imagination might affect [Music] reading I feel like this video is probably going to be a bit rambly so you know grab yourself a cup of tea and let's have a chat I have been inspired to make this video for a couple of reasons basically last week probably maybe two weeks ago depending on when I post this um I put up a video talking about like how and why I read a lot of books and I mentioned kind of in passing that um I'm a very fast reader and I was saying that I think one of the reasons why I read quite fast is because I don't have much of a visual imagination so I'm not really like forming mental images as I read and I found the response in the comments to this fact really really interesting lots of people saying that they didn't have a visual imagination or that they did and and how that might affect their reading speed or how that affected their experience of reading and so I put up like a poll on YouTube um in the kind of community a bit saying um oh do you have a visual imagination or not and how does this affect your reading speed and the kind of response to that was really interesting both in the comments and what people were voting and a few people were speaking in the comments about um subvocalization versus visualization and then I put up another poll saying you know do you subvocalize when you read do you read the words aloud in your head as you read a book and I just found the responses to this really really fascinating so I thought I would make a video about it I'm also going to link Down Below in the description a video that Jennifer loves books made um on the similar topic last week um which I really really enjoyed and found really interesting she was talking about her experience of reading in relation to these things um and I just found that fascinating too I feel like I'm really really interested in what people's brains do as they read um obviously I am like not a scientist I know nothing about psychology and biology I don't know what actually happens in your brain as you read but I do find it really interesting to think about and talk about um how people's experience of reading differs in terms of like what's going on in their mind or imagination as they read so I feel like today we're going to have a ramble of that my only like um point of reference is my own experience and like the polls I put on book which are you know a very small bookish sample but I feel like we can still have an interesting chat so the first thing I want to talk about is visualization and reading so when I read I don't really like see anything in my mind like there aren't really any like mental visual images going on in my head as I read or as I write um I don't really have much of a visual imagination so there is something called aphantasia um which is when you have like no visual element to your thinking I don't think I'd fall into the a F Asia category because I do have a visual memory um and I also it's not that I have no visual imagination at all it's just that it's like very very slim so I found online a kind of like aphantasia test graphic which I think is quite helpful for understanding what aphantasia means um and also possibly for understanding how your own visual imagination works so I'll put it up on the screen you can see it's got like one to five um one being like your um Mind's Eye can like conjure up something perfectly and five being like there's no image in your head at all this graphic comes from a website called creative revolution I'll link that down below and they have kind of more information about aphantasia on that page just in case you're interested I find this stuff really interesting I would say I'm not at number five on that category but I'm probably like a 4.5 for visual imagination like very occasionally I might have some dim and vague image but it's very rare and it's not like my regular experience I feel like that's a scale for like visual imagination rather than for memory because I would say that my memory is it's not exactly dim and vague like I have a visual memory and the visual images are like realistic but they're like inconsistent flickering you know I remember people's faces and scenes or like a thing that I saw but it's always a bit like flickery like I can't quite grasp onto it and hold it like I can't draw anyway but even if I could draw I wouldn't be able to like draw someone's face from memory leaving a side drawing because I can't draw um I wouldn't be able to like write a very very detailed description of something I'd seen that I saw two days ago if I couldn't see it again CU I wouldn't be able to like hold the image in my head for long enough weirdly I have really really visually vivid dreams um which I usually like remember when I first wake up and then they tend to fade like later in the day or again like I've got a memory of them but it's like a bit inconsistent and I can't quite grab hold of it um and I find it very interesting that have really really visually vivid dreams because I don't have much of a visual imagination but obviously I do somewhere in my subconscious but it's not like something I can access except when I'm asleep maybe I don't know so anyway let's talk a bit more about reading and writing and not having a visual imagination um so I would say that like 95% of the time when I'm reading when I'm writing is just the words um I have quite a strong audio imagination which I'm going to talk about later on in the video but for the most part I don't really see anything like visually I'm not really visually imagining anything when I'm reading because I have a visual memory sometimes if I'm reading a book that I have seen a screen adaptation of or seen an illustration of then I will have images in my head as I read um but only sometimes like not for the whole book occasionally an image will like flash in my head so for example um say I were reading Prime Frist by Jane Austin um which is a book I've read lots of times and I've also seen the 2005 film and the 1995 miniseries lots of times so when I'm reading Pride and Prejudice if there is a line in the book where like the wording is the same in one of the screen annotations occasionally I will like have the Screen Actors face in my head um but like not all the time not very often and it would definitely vary depending on the line whether it was someone from the 19951 or the 20051 but actually the thing that I have most in my head when I read Pride and Prejudice is the illustrations in this Edition um so this Edition um from the collector's library has like little illustrations in um and I think because I've read this Edition lots of times um and read it as a teenager my visual memory of the illustrations is like quite good so sometimes when I'm reading Prime Prejudice I do have like a visual image in my head of the illustrations from this book especially this one I feel like every time I get to the proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice I do have this image in my head so like occasionally I have like visual memory images when I read but I'm not like creating any visual imagination images when I read I would say very occasionally I do get like a visual image when I read but it's very rare you know people were saying in the comments to that video and on the polls and that when they read it's like a film or a play or a TV show acting out in their head which I can't even like imagine what that would be like um it's definitely not like that for me if I ever do have a visual image it's like um someone has taken a screenshot shot from a film only one and they're showing it to me through frosted glass and then they're taking it away really fast that's like all I get if I get a visual image when I read and that only happens very very rarely so for example um when I was reading the Mars house by Natasha pulley I think I had that twice where I had like a freeze frame image very briefly very fuzzy it was gone but that happens like very rarely like the M house is the only book I can really think of that I've read this year where I had that kind of visual image in my head as I read um and even then like I said it was like two images two screenshots that like vanished afterwards um so in general when I'm reading like there's no film in my head there's no play going on there is nothing visual happening when I read except for me like looking at the page I also wanted to briefly talk about writing because I feel like maybe people imagine that writers all have like a really Vivid visual imagination um but I don't think that is true um interestingly one of the first things that like made me aware of aphantasia as a thing was um John Green um who is a writer and a YouTuber from Vlog Brothers um posted something on Twitter um saying that he was like five on the aphantasia scale that he had aphantasia and you know had no visual imagination at all so when I'm writing again as when reading I don't really have a vision imagination I would say I get that like Freeze Frame through frosted glass um more when I write but again not very often um like I don't know what any of my characters look like really unless I've written on the page what hair color they have then I don't know I haven't decided usually if I need to describe something visually then I need some kind of visual aid so for example um I have a new book coming out in July the trouble with Mrs Montgomery Hearst um and there are a lot of like big grand houses in it um so for every big grand house in the trouble with Mrs Montgomery Hurst I Googled National Trust and English Heritage properties that um were built in the right years for the houses and that were the right size and I described them and in fact when the book is out um if you have a look at the map um you can see that all the houses on the map are like different shapes um and one of the reasons why they're different shapes is because I sent the guy who was illustrating the map the names of the real houses that I had based all the houses in wickens shut off so he could um use the shapes of the actual houses which I thought was really fun um and I do a similar thing kind of if I need to describe I don't know a piece of furniture then I like go to anti websites and look up furniture from the time and you describe like a dress or what someone's wearing I usually Google Victorian fashion plates like if I need to describe something in a lot of visual detail then I usually do need some kind of visual aid to help me on my way I also often draw Maps or floor plans and when I'm writing so obviously you just saw the map in the trouble with Mrs montgomer hearse which is very beautiful that comes from a map that I drew which is not very beautiful but was very useful for me to work out where everything was um and if I'm writing a book which is mostly set in one house then I usually have a like big floor plan I had a floor plan for the secrets of Heartwood Hall um so that I knew where all the rooms were and I guess maybe you don't need that as much if you have a visual imagination I don't know I actually think it's quite useful as a writer to not have a visual imagination because I feel like for some writers it's quite hard to like get the image you have in your head on the page or like into the mind of another reader whereas like I have no visual image in my head so it's not on the page unless I'm creating on the page um and also like because my imagination is just words for the most part that means like I'm always writing stories in my head rather than like seeing a scene in my head that I'm trying to put into words like what's in my head is the words anyway so maybe that helps I don't know moving back to reading I also kind of wanted to think about how my visual imagination affects how I read as I said in the previous video I do wonder if it means that I read faster because I'm not like imagining things visually in my head I also wonder if it's why I don't love like really really lyrical overly descriptive books or like more literary fiction for example I usually don't find like similes or metaphors or any kind of like imagery very powerful in books um and I do wonder if that is because I have no visual imagination so I'm not like putting images together to make things I don't know I was thinking I love Thomas Hardy he's one of my favorite writers but so many people the thing they love about Thomas is his nature writing and I'm like I have zero interest in his nature writing that does nothing for me I'm fascinated by how his people interact with landscape and how the particular Landscapes these people live in affect their communities but the actual like nature writing does nothing for me at all and I wonder if that's because I don't have a vis imagination so I can't like do anything with the way he describes nature sorry if the camera's moved I had to plug in my camera so it didn't myun half battery because I have already been talking for a while anyway I feel like not having much of a vision imag ation doesn't really like affect my enjoyment of reading at all like I love reading so much because I love stories and words and I never really feel the lack of a visual imagination um like I said I do occasionally get like a visual Freeze Frame that's gone um when I'm reading but it's not very often and I don't feel like my reading experience has been any less good if I don't get that in fact I can only think of like one book that I have read where I felt my lack of a visual imagination and that is June by Frank Herbert um and I think that was because the building is quite complicated and also really fascinating but I I couldn't really grasp the world um I think partly because I didn't have vage imagination and actually having seen the two June films in the last few years I love those films I think they're fantastic and I got so much more out the films than the book and I don't think that is entirely to do with visual imagination stuff I also think it's to do with the depiction of the female characters Etc but I feel like I loved the films so much more partly because the world just like looked amazing um and I didn't get that from the book um which maybe you would from the book if you had a really strong Vision imagination I don't know in general though I feel like my very limited visual imagination like doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment of reading at all maybe it does mean I get on with certain books less well um maybe it does mean I read faster but I feel like those would be the main effects of my reading so let me turn to my poll about visual imagination because I found this really really interesting so of my um book sample of 837 people um who probably I guess all read more than average people because we're all here watching book um and you know this is obviously a very small sample of people and probably doesn't represent people as a whole but I still found it interesting I found it really interesting that 58% of people said they had a more visual imagination 20% of people said they didn't have much of a visual imagination um and then you know the rest of people said they were somewhere in the middle I knew some people had a very visual imagination but I feel like I don't think I realize it was most people and maybe it's not most people 58% of people isn't that big a majority and like I said very small sample of bookish people I also feel like from my questions about like um slow reading versus Fast reading um it feels like there was a correlation between having a vivid VI imagination and being a slower reader but there was like less of a correlation between not having much of a vision imagination and how fast or slow you read more people who said they didn't have much of a VI imagination said they were faster readers but also there was a much like smaller gap between those two statistics than between um the Vivid Vis imaginations and fast and slow readers obviously again like I said a very small bookish sample that doesn't tell us that much about the ground scheme of things um but I still found it fascinating I also found the comments like really really interesting um both on this poll and from the video where i' spoken about not having much of a vision imagination like the amount of people saying that when they read see in their mind like a film or a movie or play or a TV show that their visual imagination is that Vivid that it's like they're watching something I found that fascinating cuz I just can't imagine what it was like someone even said that their imagination is so vivid visually that when they're looking back on something later they can't remember if they read a book or saw a film I also found it really interesting um people saying like what they did and didn't visualize so some people said they saw buildings or places much more clearly than they saw characters in their head or some people said they saw characters much more clearly or some people said they saw like protagonists main characters much more clearly than Side characters and a lot of people said it kind of depended on the author or the writing style some people also said that they visualize just like naturally or automatically as they read and then for some people they said it takes more effort and it's like a purposeful thing they're doing while they're reading which I find really interesting you know like I said I very occasionally have a visual image when I read um that's like a screenshot but I I'm not creating that consciously and I can't create that consciously like even if I think really hard I can't I just can't like conure up an image um that just isn't how my mind works um so I found that really really interesting I also found it really interesting some people saying you know that they didn't realize that not everyone creates a mental image in their head because for them that's just completely natural and I just find it really interesting that people's minds work in very different ways I'll read out two comments that I found really interesting one was it really depends on the author though they are the co-director of the film in my head I just thought that was a really nice way of putting it um not that it's describing something that I have experienced but I just thought that was a really lovely way of like summing up how someone's visual imagination might work and then another comment I found really interesting was there are times when I feel like I'm watching a movie especially when the book is written like that so reading someone like Hemingway or donat tart or even tolken is a breeze for me so I found this really interesting because um I haven't read any tolken yet though I would like to but I have read some Hemingway and some donat tart and they're two authors who I don't really get on with at all um who's writing styles are just not for me and maybe that is because like this person said they write in a very visual way and I can't connect with that maybe there are certain literary writers who are a bit more Visual and I just don't get on with that and maybe when I say a book is too literary for me maybe sometimes they mean it's too visual for me I don't know it was interesting that a lot of people said that they really love that they have a vivid visual imagination and for for them it's like a really big part of the joy of reading which I guess makes me a little bit sad that I don't have that but also like I still love reading hugely um and a lot of other people in the comments were saying that they loved reading and didn't have much of Vis imagination and that never bothered them and you know never impacted their reading um you know like I find so I found that really really interesting anyway let's move on from talking about visualization to talking about sub vocalization because this is another topic that I find really interesting so while I don't visualize anything really while I read um you know like I said 95 to 98% of the time I don't visualize anything when I read but I do sub voal ize so subvocalization um refers to um when you speak or hear or sound out every word in your mind as you read so when I read I sort of hear or sound out every word in my head um sort of like I'm narrating the audio book myself um but for the dialogue or for first person narratives I sometimes I usually I would say have a voice in my head that is sort of separate from my own and I feel like when I'm reading that's me like consciously trying to do that whereas when I write that's just what's happening in my head and it's less conscious and more natural I don't know if that's really true obviously it's very hard to like make a distinction between what's conscious and what's natural I don't know um but like when I write I feel like I have the characters voices in my head more distinct and more like fully separate voices than when I'm reading but also it's less of an effort I mean it's not that big an effort to sub vocalize when I read like that that is just naturally how I read but I feel like maybe to have more distinct voices and dialogue and stuff is more like a conscious thing I making an effort to do as I read but also I have a much better audio imagination than I do a visual imagination like I do have an audio imagination I kind of Imagine different voices um and that kind of definitely makes an impact to how I read when I write I do actually often um vocalize rather than subvocalize like I often mutter to myself when I write which I don't think I even realized for a long time time until um at one point I was um I think I like turned my camera on to film like something for a a writing Vlog or like a journey to publication Vlog and I was like oh I just sit there muttering to myself as I write I also read my work aloud a lot when I edit um and I do put on different voices with the different characters which one reflection makes me sound like exceptionally eccentric but like that feels very natural to me and I know what all my characters voices sound like even though I don't know what they look like moving back from writing to reading um when I read I sub vocalize you know I read out every word in my head um and for dialogue or first person narration I do usually have like a slightly different voice or a slight like change to the voice I suppose um I also usually try and sub vocalize in like the correct accent for the character um so if I'm reading a book where like the main character is American or Scottish or whatever then I will have that accent in my head as I read it's probably not going to be like the best accent ever um it would probably be terrible if I tried to do it out loud but like in my head it sounds as it should um and that often like helps with the reading experience I would say that I usually have a relatively clear idea in my head of how characters sound even if I have no idea what characters look like so I would say that like when I'm reading as a general rule I subvocalize but there are a couple of occasions when I don't subvocalize um I also didn't used to subvocalize like I remember as a child that I didn't really subvocalize much when I read um and in fact I used to skim read books a lot as a child and a kind of very early teen um I used to forget and miss things a lot and I would subvocalize the dialogue um but that also me that the dialogue was like the only bit I really read fully because I think the rest of the time I would just like skip over the words a bit and not really take them in I do think that there is definitely something in between subvocalizing and skim reading but I think for me maybe there isn't like I feel like for me I'm sub vocalizing or I'm skimming um and there's not like much space in between for me fully to take something in and less them are vocalizing it fully in my head I really distinctly remember reading J A when I was 13 and that was like one of the first books that I sub vocalized like all the way through because that made it easier for me to understand it because I guess it was a slightly more tricky book than the books I had been reading and it also just made it like a really rich wonderful experience like I didn't want to miss a single word and so I like read it aloud to myself in my head in a way that I didn't usually and I remember that like really changed the reading experience and it's probably one of the reasons why it's one of my favorite books I would say that now I basically subvocalize all the time when I'm reading except for on two occasions so the first is non-fiction um and especially for when I'm doing historical research so if I'm reading non-fiction um like just for fun I will try and to vocalize and I will read every word in my head to myself although I do feel like I find it harder to stay focused on non-fiction and I think one of the reasons why I prefer listening to non-fictional Audi book than reading it physically is because I find it harder to focus on subvocalizing non-fiction I think maybe because it's just my voice not like a character's voice because there isn't a character so maybe my mind gets bored a bit more easily because there's like less variation in the sub vocalization or the voices in my head but also a lot of the non-fiction reading that I do physically is um non-fiction reading that I'm doing for historical research and when I'm doing historical research I don't sub vocalize all the time because I'm not reading every single word I'm like skimming and looking for the bits that are relevant um for what I'm researching so usually if I'm reading a book for historical research I will like read the introduction sub vocalizing and then some pages I'll read like in a more focused way sub vocalizing everything and then some pages I'll just like skim through looking for keywords and and then stop and like read a paragraph subvocalizing um but I won't like subvocalize the whole thing I read a lot of books for historical research but I often don't read them all the way through and I don't usually like Mark them read on good reads or anything because I've had like a kind of different reading experience of them I guess and then the other time I kind of don't subvocalize is um if I'm really not not getting on with a book sometimes if I'm really struggling with a book I sort of stop vocalizing and I start to read the words but I'm definitely not as engaged in them mentally and maybe I'm skimming them a little bit um but I am still like getting the gist and what's happening but I'm not like focused in the same way it's almost like a half dnf for me because I don't dnf very often and I feel like my sort of alternative to dnfing is I'm reading this book still but I've stopped vocalizing so for example um last month I read the Satanic Verses by Salon rushy um and I kind of was aware like a third of the way through that I was struggling with it a lot and that there were a lot of things I just wasn't getting that I wasn't hugely loving it but it had also been on my TBR for a really long time and I really wanted to finish it and I also was aware that there were like two different strands to the story and one strand I was getting something out of and one strand I wasn't really so I kind of stopped to vocalizing on the Strand that I wasn't as into um so I was still like reading it like I was still you know using my bookmark underlining every line kind of looking at each line in turn but it wasn't the same like fully sub vocalized experience that I usually have when I'm reading I don't know if that really makes sense um but I hope that does someone in one of the comments um on the poll about this um said that they wondered if one of the reasons why I read very quickly is because I talk very fast and therefore my subvocalization is probably very fast and I do wonder if that's true as I said I I read very quickly and I am sub vocalizing that I can subvocalize at a very quick rate because I talk exceptionally fast and my thoughts speak um is that a thing that's not a thing my thought speech um moves even faster than my actual speech if you're watching this video um I digitally slow down all of my videos to 085 because I know I talk really quickly um so you're hearing me speak and I'm probably speaking quite fast but this is actually only 85% of how fast I actually speak um and I speak even f it in my head so I do wonder if my rapid speech and my inability to speak slowly does affect my subvocalization and how fast I read all of the characters in every book I read probably talk very fast in my head because that's how I talk another thing um that kind of came up in the comments um about this was um kind of inner monologues um and how your mind works when you're not reading um because apparently not everyone hasn't in a monologue which I find really weird and strange probably in the same way that people with a very visual imagination find it strange that I don't like see images when I read but I guess if you have a very visual imagination then sometimes you can think in images whereas like because I don't really have a visual imagination um or I definitely don't have very much of one all my thoughts are words so I don't know how it works for other people but I have a constant inner monologue um almost like my mind is a rather boring novel narrated in first person present tense interrupted from time to time with like rehearsals for book videos and um stories I'm writing in my head I have always written stories in my head like ever since I was a kid I would write stories in my head and that was always like sub vocalized not visually imagined so you know I feel like some people who write novels maybe they could have also written films or plays drawn art or like creative music like they could have done other things with the stories in their heads but I feel like the stories in my head could only have never been novels or short stories because that's what they are in my head they're just words they're not like scenes that I'm narrating they are stories made of words that are in my head that I'm putting on the page and I also feel like because I have an inner monologue and my brain is constantly talking to itself um I kind of have to sub vocalize when I'm reading otherwise it's really hard to turn off my inner monologue because usually my inner monologue is just going but when I'm reading my inner monologue switches off um and sometimes when like watching TV or films or really good play like I can usually judge how um like invested in something I am by whether my internal monologue like switches off or not and I actually think one of the reasons why I really like listening to audiobooks or um watching BBE while I'm like doing chores exercising cooking um cleaning anything like that I think it's because unless I'm doing those things my internal monologue is like worrying about stuff I also subvocalize as I type um like I said sometimes I um speak aloud as I write um but I also definitely subvocalize and like hear my own voice as I type yes for writing but even if I'm just like writing an email or typing a text I'm also sub vocalizing then I don't know if everyone is I don't know if that's normal um I have no idea but aren't mes fascinating anyway um this is going to be such a long video let's move on to the poll I asked about Sur vocalization CU I found this really really interesting so this is the poll I put up and again we have a little book sample of 733 people um people who are probably more bookish and reading more books than average people but you know 733 people nonetheless um answered this question and I found it really interesting um so 62% of people said that they subvocalize most of the time when they read um kind of split half and half between people who said it was like a full cast audio book in their head and people who said that it wasn't lots of people did say in the comments as well that it was somewhere in between and I feel like mine is somewhere in between when I write it's like a full cast audio book when I read sometimes it is but sometimes it's just like I put on a different voice for a character rather than like a full cast audio book um sometimes it is but it kind of depends then 14% of people said they don't really subvocalize 19% of people said it depends on the book or that they sometimes subvocalize and 5% said they only subvocalize the dialogue I found this really interesting um and the reason why I put the dialogue option on was because I know that that's what I used to do when I was a kid it also kind of makes sense that like you would to vocalize the dialogue because those are the bits that are said aloud in the text um so they are kind of different I guess actually it's quite a similar percentage of people said they sub vocalized as said they have a very Vivid visual imagination maybe I need to put a poll up to see whether there's a correlation or indeed a negative correlation between subvocalizing and having a visually vivid imagination I found this poll really interesting as I did with the last one um because I think I would have thought that it was a higher percentage of people who said vocalized when they read in the same way that I was surprised by how many people said they had a vivid visual imagination I was kind of expecting it to be a higher proportion of people who said that they subvocalize when they read I think just because my experience of reading is not much Vis imagination lots of subvocalizing and audio imagination um and it's very hard to imagine what goes on in other people's heads I found the comments really really interesting on this poll in the same way that some people said they couldn't imagine what it was like to read and not have a visually vivid imagination lots of people said they couldn't imagine how you would read and what it would be like to read without some vocalization interestingly quite a few people said that they had a very Vivid visual imagination and don't sub vocalize and that it seemed for those people that those things were tied together so for example I'll read a couple of comments that I found interesting the more immersed I am in a book the less I think about what I'm reading aside from absorbing the information the faster I read and the less likely I am to be sub vocalizing it's a weird almost unconscious state where that movie of images and sounds and details and action is playing out as I read and I'm just sort of in it like a dream that sounds fascinating I'm I'm so intrigued by this that is that just how some people read so maybe if you have a really vivid imagination you don't so vocalize because the words just become images in your head as you read this is fascinating and someone else said when I read it usually feels like watching a film it's like I see images and not the words on the page someone else said I have an overly vivid imagination it's like when I read and watch a play or a movie however I never give much thought to voices and then other people were saying that they do both um so they sort of like act out or sub vocalize the dialogue in their mind um and then the descriptions like turn directly into images in their head some people said they like to vocalize at the beginning of a novel and then the more they get into it the less they need to subvocalize or the less they do subvocalize some people said they subvocalize poetry but not novels and that it depends on how quickly they're trying to read and there was also an interesting discussion in the comments about like different kinds of vocalization so for some people it was a lot of voices you know full cast audiobook style and for others it's not um and I also think a lot of people struggle to judge and articulate whether it was just their voice or whether they were hearing other voices which I know I do YouTube only allows you to have five options in polls and I kind of wish it allowed you to have 10 because they would have done a lot more Jennifer loves books who again has done a really interesting video on this topic too which I link down below said that she sub vocalizes but it hadn't ever occurred to her that other people would like hear other voices for character and then it was always just her voice which I found really interesting so I think that's mostly what I wanted to say about Sur vocalization but I have a few like other bits and pieces that I wanted to talk about which are kind of related to this um so some people in the comments um on the polls and the video were talking about other senses when reading and so someone said that they can even like imagine smells when reading which I found fascinating like I I have none of that I don't think I imagine tastes when reading either but I definitely have like read books which have a lot of detail about food and it's made me feel hungry but I don't think I'm really like Imagining the taste so much as I'm just like thinking about food I am sometimes aware of like some kind of other physical reaction to reading so for example if I'm reading like a really tense situation you know my heart will race and if I'm reading a book that is very anxious then sometimes I will feel anxious not just when I'm reading but like the rest of the day and I remember actually when I read the wonder by emad donu which is a fantastic work of historical fiction but the Wonder um is quite Medical in ways I guess it's about a nurse who has um been sent to watch over a girl who claims she is surviving without eating and so the book has a lot about not eating a lot about salvation a lot about what not eating could do to your body um and when reading the Wonder I felt like dizzy and laded all the time um like while reading but also just like the rest of the day like I feel like the week I read the Wonder I just felt like physically awful which I feel is quite a weird extreme reaction to have to the Wonder I feel like that's a terrible way to recommend the Wonder read this book it might make you feel ill but like that was a really like powerful sensation which I guess is it's not that's not really the same as like visualization and subvocalization but I guess that it's kind of tied in and I do notice like I have a knee injury and if I read a book um where a character has a knee or leg injury of some kind my knee does hurt more um so I don't know how this ties into imagination but sometimes you do get like a sensation communicated to you through a book I guess maybe not everyone does and then the other thing I kind of thought was maybe connected to some of these things somehow I don't know is that I'm like a very emotional reader like I reckon I cry or like at least tear up at more than half the books I read which I feel is a bit excessive and some of them it's not even that they're like devastatingly sad I'm just like that was a beautiful sentence and then I just like start crying I feel like I didn't used to do that as a child or a teenager I feel like that's definitely an adult like change um but I do feel like really like emotionally like physically emotionally invested in books and I guess that is kind of related to how I experience reading and I wonder if maybe because I don't have visual imagination I therefore like am compensating with like extra emotional imagination I don't know I have no idea if that's related to other things um but I kind of thought that was maybe interesting to to talk about like how emotion as well as senses might tie into your reading experience I feel like that is enough of a ramble I've been talking for nearly an hour and I've said lots of random stuff and I don't know if any even made any sense I feel like if I was someone who um knew anything about psychology or had any background in Psychology wouldn't it be amazing to do a PhD that was like all about how people experience reading in their minds um wouldn't that be fascinating I'm not the person to do that at all but I do find it really interesting to think about what goes on in your head when you read and how that would affect your reading experience and also maybe what kind of books you like and all of that kind of stuff um and also like it's so hard to communicate what is going on in your head that it's really hard to conceive of how other people might experience reading um but I just feel like this is a really interesting topic and I was kind of fascinated um doing those polls last week like I feel like this is all I've been thinking about for the last week so um anyway please do let me know down in your comments leave long interesting complicated comments about what your mind does when you read because I would be fascinated to know and we can have another long interesting chat maybe I'll put up some more polls I don't know um but anyway that's all from now thank you so much for watching and I'll be back very soon with another bookish video [Music]

Channel: Books and Things

Views: 2,532

Keywords: booktube, books, literature, reading, currently reading, book review, book reviews, review, reviews, classics community, new books, literary, book love, bookish video, booktuber, read more books, audiobook, new reader, new readers, aphantasia, subvocalisation, subvocalization, imagination, visual, vivid, reading experience, inner monologue, brain, mind, pscyhology, read, experience, sense, emotion, writing, how i write, how i read, writing video, authortube, visualisation, visualization, film, movie, audio

Id: CP-T9PfEuYw

Length: 37min 7sec (2227 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024