Every day, without it being outwardly visible, we have an inner life: we can think, reason, daydream, imagine, visualize, and feel. This inner life is sometimes composed of language, of speech: we might talk to ourselves, daydream in words, reflect or think using words, or imagine past and future conversations. The nature of this experience, however, varies significantly from person to person, and from context to context.

My presentation will explore this mental universe, focusing on inner speech. We’ll challenge the common assumption that the verbal inner monologue is a universal experience and examine its inter-subjective and intra-subjective variation. I will present recent advances in the research of inner speech from a neuroscience perspective, exploring what it reveals about language organisation in cognition. The presentation will draw on recent work from our Aphantasia Alpes Research Group (AARG), lead by Hélène Loevenbruck and Alan Chauvin (LPNC Grenoble). We will explore current methodologies and discuss future possibilities of combining introspective methods with specific tasks and neurophysiological and neuroimaging methods. The talk will also address multilingualism and the emotional dimensions of language use.

In the subsequent open discussion and introspection workshop, we will discuss how we infer other people’s inner experiences based on our own. A central question will be: How do we scientifically capture and describe an experience that is, by its very nature, subjective? How do we ask questions about inner experience? We will explore significant biases that have historically limited our understanding—biases that persist today and apply across human and social sciences, including the over-reliance on WEIRD samples, various framing biases, and, importantly, biases related to linguistic relativity, the monolingual bias, and the so-called egocentric bias in cognitive science. Participants are invited to reflect on their own subjective inner experiences, focusing on inner speech, the multiplicity of languages in their inner life, and their respective emotional weight. We will conclude by reflecting on how our own subjective experiences might shape our own research.

Participants will be sent a related questionnaire some days in advance.