My wife lacks the inner voice that most people have, just as David Dunthorn's wife does (16 October, p 27). She does not experience any kind of inner dialogue, and when she reads she hears nothing.She says that she knows what the words mean as soon as she sees them. She doesn't have to recite them as if she were listening to an audio book. This reading method allows her to churn through books at an incredible rate, while still absorbing the detail. This phenomenon has prompted me to wonder how someone engages in abstract reasoning if they have never heard a spoken word.
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