I recently had a conversation with a friend about the books we read and she posed an interesting question that I had never even contemplated before: did I read a book in my own voice or that of the characters. I thought about this for a moment, thinking back to the last book that I had read and realized that I read the book in my own voice. My friend, however, reads the book in the voice of the characters.
It made me wonder:
Do people generally read a book in their own voice or that of the characters (as described by the author) and is there any scientific reason for this?
There has been limited scientific research completed on the subject of Inner Reading Voices (IRVs). Paul King, neuroscientist states that IRV does show up in an area of the brain during fMRI brain scans and scientists have identified a nerve bundle that connects the speaking part of the brain (Broca’s area) to the understanding part (Wernicke’s area) which play an important part in IRV. It has been suggested that a reason why the internal voice we hear sounds like our own when reading is due to the fact that we learn to read out loud.
Research, conducted by Ruvanee P. Vilhauer found that the majority of people do have inner reading voices and these can be different to their own voice and include all the auditory qualities of normal voices such as pitch, loudness, gender, identity and emotional tone.
Vilhauer’s research revealed that 82.5% of people heard at least one voice when reading: either their own reading voice or multiple voices. Only 10.6% said they didn’t hear any voices while reading.
Some people even “mentioned that they found the voice distracting or scary.”
Fiona MacDonald: Study Finds That, Yes, Other People Also Hear a Voice in Their Head While Reading, Science alert
And 7% of responders, like me, only realised they had a reading voice when they were asked about it.
If we are unaware of our IRV then it must be a subconscious, uncontrollable process of the mind. Why then do people use their inner voice differently? Does it mean others who read more in their own voice use greater visual imagery in their reading?
In summary Vilhauer believes that:
“auditory hallucinations are often inner voices that are simply incorrectly identified as belonging to someone else.”
Ruvanee Vilhaur: Inner reading voices: An overlooked form of inner speech
However, in the case of reading a book, I do not believe that anyone, who is reading one in a different voice tone or pitch different to their own, believes these are external voices. Instead it is their minds way of processing the descriptions, that they read literally, into a voice as a way of imagination, complementing the visual imaginings of a book. It is the words painted by the writer that create the scene in the mind’s eye or the visual image of a character, likewise the internalising of the descriptive character traits, creates the sound of the characters voice when they are described as male, female, Scottish, East End London for instance.
Interestingly IRV can vary depending on the text we are reading, for instance emails or texts from family or friends can be read in the voice of this person, and I will often do this, which is interesting considering I do not use a different IRV when reading books!
Whatever the reason behind the variety in IRV, I bet I have you observing your own IRV now. Let me know your IRV in the comments, I would be really interested to know.