I can read much, much faster than I can think words, and yet I still hear (at least some of) the words.

I can mentally replay any sense I've experienced. I sometimes get appropriate physiological responses, such as my mouth watering when imagining food. I can hear music, see movies. The resolution of any of this isn't very good. I wouldn't normally say I can actually experience these things, I do because I can't grok how else one would imagine a cow without "mentally seeing" something like a cow; but apparently this is the case (?).

I am bad at manipulating numbers. As far as I can tell, either I have something memorized (e.g. multiplication tables) or I graphically visualize writing the problem out, long-hand, on paper, complete with all the steps you learned in 3rd grade like crossing out digits when you borrow. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit this... the most inefficient virtual machine that ever was.

On the other hand, I have amazing (low-end at least) intuition. Actually, most all of the problem solving and "real thinking" I do is a complete mystery to me. This is causing problems for my research, as in lower education (which I consider as everything through undergrad) I never had to study, or even think methodically. I just squint my eyes and the answers comes out of the ether.

I have a heavy internal monologue and do almost all thinking that way. I notice that my thoughts are fully formed prior to myself "hearing" the sentence, but that I have difficultly progressing onto the next thought until I "say" the first sentence to myself. It's like I have a mental log which can hold one sentence at a time, saying it to myself gets rid of that sentence and fills it in with the next. Then I proceed to say the next.

I have almost no ability to imagine images. I have some ability to imagine motion, but no real ability to imagine colors or textures. I can imagine sounds, particularly my internal monologue, and find it difficult or impossible to imagine sounds that I could not attempt to create with my voice. Doing scientism's test of putting my tongue on the top of my mouth at first seemed to impair my ability to make imagine some sounds but with small effort or practice I find essentially no loss of ability. I can imagine feelings or textures better than images but not as clearly as sounds. If you were to ask me to imagine a cow, the best I could do would be to imagine tracing my hands around the cow and sort of "explore" its shape that way. It's very much a local phenomenon in the sense that I only feel a small region as if my hand were feeling it. I have difficulty imagining such feelings outside of a perhaps 1 meter diameter sphere in front of my face and extreme difficultly in imagining a feeling as occurring beyond about 10 meters.

I have poor sense of location and relative position. I tend to get confused in buildings, even if I have been in them before. Just the other month I entered a room from an unusual angle, thought I knew which angle I was entering but was wrong and spent upwards of 20 seconds confusedly thinking that the room had been drastically changed before realizing that the door I was looking for was a couple feet to my right. I had entered that way once before and had been in the room dozens of times before. I cannot navigate my way back if I have taken a car ride while someone else is driving. If I drove, there is still a moderate chance that I will mess up on the way back. I remember driving directions entirely as a "turn left here, then right there" sequence, not as a route in 2 dimensional space. However, I perform very well on tests of ability to mentally rotate objects.

I have difficultly discerning music notes, sometimes even in the apparently trivial way of saying "the second note is higher than the first note". I played an instrument for 6 years, though I was never good at it. I was incapable of tuning to any accuracy by trying to match a given note.

As for the Feynman article, I usually count verbally to myself. In response to this article, I learned to count (though I do not actually use this in any real cases) by visually imagining putting "dots" down in regular patterns, particularly in a 3x3 grid followed by a 3x3 grid of 3x3 grid, etc. to let my count up to at least 81 reliably (mental math required to convert that to decimal...). I am able to do this while reading aloud, as Feynman had hoped to develop a tactile method of counting. I imagine that using something like this toy would let you easily develop a tactile counting system (I can do this, but only with moving my fingers in the patterns that the game requires, and cannot just imagine doing them while reading aloud).

I had a little problem related to my exercise; I guess it is somehow related to this topic. Exercising with music feels more pleasant than without music. But I want to measure how much I do, and when I count in mental voice: "one, two, three...", my inner voice ruins the music. It would be nice if I could just exercise without counting and someone else would count for me, but I don't have a volunteer or a device to do that. So I tried to find another method of counting.

An obvious choice was to use fingers, unless they are involved in the exercise. I can count to 20 by opening and then closing fingers. (In theory there are 1024 binary numbers available, but quick binary increments need too much attention.) This is a good compromise, because if after each twenty I say "ONE", "TWO", "THREE" etc., I can listen to most of the music and when it's over I can do the necessary math (e.g. "THREE" + 15 is 3×20+15=75). I need to say these words (silently, but move my lips), otherwise it's very easy to forget where I was. If I am unable to fully stretch my fingers, even imagining the movement and increasing the tension in the finger is enough; unless the fingers are under big pressure e.g. when doing push-ups.

Another option is to visualize numbers. I imagine big neon numbers flashing in front of me. But this is somehow a bit difficult. I suspect that I use a small voice subroutine when incrementing the visual numbers.

Yet another option is this: It is easy to "count without counting" up to 4. A larger sequence can be somehow divided into fours. It is like I am doing "@@@@, @@@@, @@@@, @@@@" and later I can calculate it was 16. I guess this is some nonverbal voice, or rhythm, perhaps with some kinestetic component, I am not sure. If I combine it with a visual system, it is like this: I do "@@@@" and then I imagine a light at upper-left corner of my mental screen; more "@@@@" and another light at upper-center of my screen, etc. until there are 3×3=9 lights, and then I do another "@@@@" and it's together 40. If 40 is not enough, I say "FORTY" and start again. This system is usable up to one hundred, which is enough for this purpose; and it leaves my audio channel free to enjoy the music.

(After reading what I wrote, I wish I would put so much creativity into more serious tasks in my life.)

I am constantly watching a movie in my head. Past events, future projections, details of a car engine I really never saw it, old cinema movies and so on. Those images are almost never of a very high visual quality and the colors are pale. Sounds are rarely there, but there is usually a flowing text somehow in the background.

The thinking I am doing has a little to nothing to do with these movies, the "background text" has. Sometimes the movie helps with bright colored surfaces.

I have the same 5, except in place of 1 I have something linguistic but not auditory. I can break it down into a stream of "words" in an order but there isn't sound (nor visible words). The stream follows English grammar basically, and the "words" have English parts of speech but do not always correspond easily to English (or any other language I know) words. Sometimes there's a translation but it's not obvious to me, nor do my thoughts slow down thinking of it.

I can usually convert most of these thoughts into words by a paraphrase or translation, but I remember when I was a kid having many thoughts that I could memorize and repeat to myself but not successfully express in external language. A few of the most important ones I can remember now and translate.

I'd extend category 5 to iffy-trained kinetic stuff. For example, if I'm driving on ice, I have a "feel" of where my car is going to go if I turn a bit left, accelerate slightly, etc. I feel it in my body, sort of like the car is a part of me.

Another thing I didn't see mentioned is a kind of self-awareness stream, where I lay down (at least short-term) memories of where my attention has been and what I've voluntarily done.

[Decided to write all of this before reading the main text of the article to prevent contamination, which I imagine would be very easy with subjective introspection reporting.]

Most of my thoughts are verbal (english sentences), but I have a secondary non-verbal awareness going on as well which can be monitoring my thoughts/doing something on automatic/aware of surroundings (not implying these are the same faculty though). (On a side note I find alcohol lowers the speed of my verbal throughts) It takes effort to imagine new images but I recall photos I've seen very easily. By experiment I've found I can imagine up to six dots/points at once, but any more im putting my attention on different parts at a time. I remember songs very easily and 'play' them in my head pretty much on automatic.

I feel 'psysical' sensations in my head when thinking hard or experiencing certain emotional states. Best I can describe it is, for example an insight in something like a puzzle/maths problem/finding a flaw in an argument feels like untwisting, or unlocking (in the literal sense of a physical lock turning) something. My emotions generally manifest as sensations in the body (so tightness in the chest for anxiety).

[Will see what else comes to mind after reading the article and the rest of the responses.]

I think in an internal monologue and have weak visualization skills. In addition to the internal monologue, I also have a song running through my head much of the time, which doesn't seem to interfere with any other process that doesn't require deep concentration. It does fade in and out while I'm typing.

When doing math, especially algebra and calculus, I think in a way that's more like internal monologue than visualization, but doesn't explicitly use language. It's almost more kinesthetic than anything else. It's similar to solving one of these block-sliding puzzles (and I did go through a phase of loving that puzzle in grade school), where I move the symbols around and combine them and pull them apart like they can slide around the page.

When counting and concentrating on nothing else or on something visual, I usually count by hearing the numbers. However, when I'm reading or typing or, for some reason, doing exercise, I count visually. My visual counting has each number turning into the next number in the center of my mental visual field, not moving along a tape like Feynman described.

Baiscally, a black box. I observe that for 'easy' problems, the black box takes the initial problem and returns the answer. For a 'hard' problem, I need to break it down into steps to feed to the black box. 'Breaking it down' is an easy problem, so my black box immediately returns the broken-down steps, which I then feed one-by-one to the box, culminating in an answer. Subjectively, it feels like I am being given the answer on easy problems, and I am simply prodding my brain to be reluctantly and piecemeal giving the answer on hard problems. I don't have much trust for the insight feeling; in my experience it's just a problem the black box solves for me, except that it tags its solution with 'feel a rush of insight-feeling', and this doesn't correlate strongly with useful or deep answers.

I have no internal monologue. Sometimes speaking the problem helps prod the black box; I don't do it very often unless I'm drunk or sleepy.

In terms of auditory reading, it's laborious for me to "sound out" an entire sentence in my mind. When I'm reading as fast as I can without speed-reading, what I'm "hearing" tends to be the most relevant terms in any given sentence.

1. is familiar to me in a lot of ways; I experience something similar when I'm typing, which I call "thinking with my hands." It feels intuitive to imagine that my fingers know what to say, and that my mind is largely apart from that process. (It bothers me that this is intuitive, much like how it bothers me that it's intuitive to think of tension as glow-ey light that flows through one as one breathes in and out, but whatever.) The difference between hand-writing and typing is like the difference between reading back when I needed to sound out words, and what it's like now that I can speed-read and entirely eliminate subvocalizations.

Thinking-with-bodies in general is useful to me. I've found I can remember the entire content of a lecture by looking at a doodle I've done whilst listening to it, even if the lecture in question was years ago. I really, really enjoy the method of loci, and imagine several houses and a garden to keep ideas in order.

I have 1 and 2. I don't really understand the others.

With regard to 1, beside internal monologue, I can also imagine sounds, other people's voices, music, etc. I'm especially adept at creating elaborate internal musical compositions which is surprising because I have absolutely no interest in music (I play no instruments and never purchase or download music). I'll often get songs and tunes "stuck in my head" that are pure invention (I can't imagine great lyrics though and usually fill gaps with nonsense words). Most of my internal monologue is directed at an audience. Usually when I'm thinking of something I'm thinking of how I'd explain it to another person, sometimes the audience is generic but often it's more specific. When I press my tongue to the top of my mouth, the very same things I can't pronounce verbally, I can't pronounce internally either. It also alters my ability to imagine sounds, which makes me think my ability to imagine sounds is derivative of my ability to produce them verbally (however, I'm seemingly much better at producing sounds and impersonations internally, although I think this can be explained by the lack of feedback).

My visual imagination is very good. When I was younger, I was very interested in movies, and would imagine ideas for movies in elaborate detail. I can still recall many of them in vivid detail. I had quite good artistic talent at that time (now neglected) which I think is strongly related to visual imagination (I tend to think that developing artistic talent and/or appreciation develops the visual imagination rather than vice versa). Wittgenstein's comments on the imagination fit my experience of mental imagery perfectly. Wittgenstein criticised Galton's study because it makes no sense to say that I discovered something about my mental imagery. I can imagine a house and, if you ask me what colour the door is, I can imagine that it has a red door. But this isn't the same as discovering it has a red door (as I could with a real house or a photo of a house had I not noticed the colour of the door). I find that this explanation fits the strange and elusive nature of the mental imagery I experience perfectly and makes the limitations of mental imagery clear to me.

I find it very difficult to imagine smells and scents voluntarily. Sometimes it happens involuntarily. Tactile imagery tends to accompany other types of mental imagery rather than appear alone. I have moments of insight and elation but can't say I experience any "thoughts" that aren't sense-related in some way.