Talking to yourself: A useful thinking tool that seems understudied and underdiscussed

In computer programming, this is commonly called rubber ducking.

Articles like this are what I read Lesswrong for. In other boards there is usually way too much discussion of technical details of technology or discussion of the novelty of some novelties. Here is a method that is easy to implement with some amount of research backing it, that I disregarded in the past, tried from time to time and didn't see the benefit for the social cost of weirdness and now am very tempted to give it another try.

For me the benefit of talking out loud would be more a matter of focus. I have an inner conversation anyway and so it would be just saying the same words as I am already saying on the inside (which might slow me down, but not an issue when the problem is difficult). The real point is that if I say the words then I am only going to say the words related to the problem. The words related to the distraction will not be said out loud. Therefore, making an effort to speak out loud means that there will be more focus on the problem because allowing my focus to wander onto distractions more obviously results in silence.

I definitely notice that it is at times when I am most struggling against a distraction that I start talking through my problems out loud.

I often "talk" to myself not out loud, but by typing my stream of thoughts into a text file, recording the questions I'm asking myself and the answers I'm coming up with.

Sometimes, just having a pen in my hand seems to improve the flow of thoughts, even if I don't actually write anything.

Two anecdotes are relevant here.

Lewis Carroll from the introduction to his Symbolic Logic:

If possible, find some genial friend, who will read the book along with you, and will talk over the difficulties with you. Talking is a wonderful smoother-over of difficulties. When I come upon anything——in Logic or in any other hard subject——that entirely puzzles me, I find it a capital plan to talk it over, aloud, even when I am all alone. One can explain things so clearly to one’s self! And then, you know, one is so patient with one’s self: one never gets irritated at one’s own stupidity!

And Henry Hazlitt from his Thinking As a Science:

Fortunately there is one method superior to any yet named, which requires no study before its application, and no paraphernalia during it. It consists in simply talking your thoughts as you think them. One who has not tried this can have no idea of its effect. It possesses almost all the advantages of writing. You cannot wander without realizing the fact immediately. It makes your thinking much less vague than if you thought silently, increases your vocabulary, always keeps pace with your ideas, and requires practically no attention.

It may be objected that silent thinking itself is put in unspoken words. But this is not true. Part of silent thinking consists of unspoken words, but part of it consists of images, concepts and attitudes which pass through our minds and which we do not take the trouble to name. In silent thinking, too, there are also what appear to be occasional dead stops. All these processes drift into each other indefinably and are unrecognizable. When we talk we realize whether our images or concepts are vague or definite by our ability to name them, and we realize when our thought comes to a ^ dead stop' by the fact that we miss the sound of our own voice.

[...] Talking has one disadvantage — it cannot always be used. To practice it, you must either lock yourself up in your room, or sit alone in a forest or field, or walk along unfrequented streets and by-ways. You can by no means allow any one to hear or see you talking to yourself. If you are caught doing this some asinine idiot is sure to mistake you for one.

For me it helps to solidify and make things explicit. However when you need to chase after foggiest thoughts and manage "seeing the forest in the trees" not so much.

I had this really weird conflict about whether I free up my thougth processes to be free from verbal structure and learn the associated thinking skills. It seemed that verbal forms would be too "clunky" and the precice definitions would under and overstate what I "meant" very often. And beside a lot of important thinking will anyway take place as non-verbal thoughts, having concious introspective acceess to that space was very tempting. I ended up going free-form but I am not sure I am happy with my choice.

It seems that I am at some places using what a mounts to heuristics while the role could be taken up by an algorythm. For a lot of thought processes there is no way to "check via the tedious and slow method" as the weird computations genuinely allow different kinds of operations than verbal forms would (+ no nice mappings between them for the intermediate stages). This might introduce a lot of sloppy thinking althought there is an idea that if really needed following the "spirit" of the thougths will lead to the correct details. However in practise I get sufficient results to base what I need to do without ever attending to the details.

What I would expect with explicit verbal thinking is greater intermind operablility. The processes you use are more likely to be supported on other minds too. However I would expect the thought space to be somewhat smaller. Thoughts can be taken more "as is" in separate chunks disregarding their context. One way of positively framing this is that the rate of correct thoughts per overall thoughts is high. However multiparadigmatic and very comprehensive thoughts become relatively expensive if not outright ruled out. A negative framing would be that the thoughts you can be right about is very small /reduces in size. It may also be harder to come up with thoughts with multiple parts needed to be created on the fly. Ie tweaking one concept is easy but tweaking / creating a concept system becomes hard.

I would guess that the expliciation effect would allow to extract from your brain more. I would however be pessimistic on how it affects your psyche structure and mental habits, both long term effects.A good harvest but poor growth soil.

I've sometimes been in the habit of talking into my phone, which conveniently removes the social stigma as long as no one is close enough to hear what you're saying. Taking walks helps. You can either record yourself or not—I find that talking into an inert phone feels awkward while recording myself makes me feel a little self-conscious. I never did find a method I was completely comfortable with, which might be why I don't do it anymore.

Anyway, I'm generally a fan of self-talk / private speech. I think it's a good way to put your thoughts through a BS detector, or at least so goes my theory: since you're hearing the words aloud you interpret the message as if someone else were saying it and so you hold it to a higher standard.

It taps the phonological loop, a distinct part of working memory that might otherwise sit idle in non-auditory tasks. More memory is always better, right?

I have always call this "using the air as buffer memory".

ADDED: Actually it doesn't just utilise the phonological loop but allows to feed thoughts through a loop than the much longer than intra-brain loops. Longer turn-around-time may allow more complexly interrelated patterns fire up (in response to the spoken word) and stabilize making them available for further introspection.

I don't know about talking to myself, but I do find describing things or concepts to someone else (almost always in text rather than spoken) helps me understand them better. I suspect it's the act of articulation itself that provides the benefit. So it wouldn't surprise me if speaking to oneself was just as good as speaking to someone else for the purpose.

While I don't know how related it is, I am reminded of this article on the health benefits of expressive writing.

(edit: Fixed link)

I talk through proofs with myself sometimes -- it totally helps.

As a negative data point, while I do talk to myself regularly, I find it frequently magnifies my neuroses (social anxiety) rather than help me manage decisions appropriately.

What about talking to your rational self? It seems like this accomplishes the benefits of talking to yourself and improves upon some of them.

Personally I don't expect this to be of much use to me. I find the task of translating thoughts into words to be more strenuous than it is for others, and so I expect this to be more distracting than helpful. I played games where I tried to subvocalise all of my thoughts the way some people have interior monologues and they support this conclusion. I believe I have a fairly good working memory (for instance, I can play blind chess) and so I don't as as much value in an external aid. Other people are commenting based on their own personal experience and feelings, so I think I can trust my own gut feeling in terms of how this will work out for me.

Maybe applicable: Mind and Society by Lev Vygotsky has something on children first talking about their actions and then (thereby?) understanding them.

So, what do you think? Useful?

Yes! (The same goes for stream-of-consciousness notes in text format, which has the advantage of bing doable regardless of who's in earshot, usually.)

It's frustrating how weird this is culturally, because then my choices are either (1) don't, (2) don't when anyone is in earshot, or (3) put up with the social consequences. Which, in practice, means I really cannot stand being trapped with people for extended periods of time (unless they are super awesome mcunderstandy people, but those are rare).

A case that doesn't seem to have been brought up is practising exposition in a verbal context, such as presenting a speech, making a case or forming an argument. I believe a common talking-to-oneself habit is rehearsal of things you'd like to say, or like to have said in the past. Hijacking this habit to rehearse exposition of useful stuff, as opposed to ruminating over inane and useless things, is a modestly successful project of mine.

I'm curious, to what merit does the social stigma have in stimulating hesitation in this instance? Is that not defiant of the consequence you're trying to bring to yourself? To utilize vocalization for enhanced cognitive effects is to desire enhanced cognitive effects. It matters, and surely more than irrelevancies. This value is much better said than done, but don't these workarounds limit development?

My friend and I would go on long walks, and there would occasionally be an bystander taking his own, a dog roaming the streets, cars going by, etc. I became annoyed at suppressing myself, and took it as a challenge to develop focus. My friend and I termed the situation "third-party syndrome", and every time a distraction came, we would mentally recognize the occurrence, and choose to continue our conversation as if the third party were non-existent. Eventually, we got pretty good at it.

Ideally, it would get to the point where we would subconsciously register it, and not even have any break in flow. Recognition to it wouldn't be much more than to see the road turns right only or that there's a slim branch on the path. It requires a development of certainty--that the value of what others think is stifled in this regard. It requires confidence in the action you've chosen to take.

Obviously, there are some cases in which rationality will dictate some other response. For instance, to objectivize courtesy (exploring matters of controversy), or preserve yourself in a situation where it actually matters.

I had a teacher say one time, "I talk to myself to find out what I'm thinking."

Talking takes a lot of time - perhaps imagining to be explaining your work to somebody is already sufficient? It works for me, and is a lot faster.

Most of the time I'm sitting in front of a computer (modern equivalent of pen and paper), so talking out loud seems to be rather unnecessary.

This seems unavoidable during strenuous physical activity, which seems related to

whenever I'm starting a complex task, I find stating my intent out loud makes a huge difference in how well the various submodules of my mind cooperate.

For me the benefit of talking out loud would be more a matter of focus. I have an inner conversation anyway and so it would be just saying the same words as I am already saying on the inside (which might slow me down, but not an issue when the problem is difficult). The real point is that if I say the words then I am only going to say the words related to the problem. The words related to the distraction will not be said out loud. Therefore, making an effort to speak out loud means that there will be more focus on the problem because allowing my focus to wander onto distractions more obviously results in silence.

I definitely notice that it is at times when I am most struggling against a distraction that I start talking through my problems out loud.