Inner reading voices: An overlooked form of inner speech

Inner speech is theorized to be the basis for auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), but few empirical studies have examined the phenomenology of inner speech, particularly while reading. One hundred and sixty posts from a popular question and answer community website were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach, to examine the phenomenology of inner reading voices (IRVs). Results indicated that many individuals report routinely experiencing IRVs, which often have the auditory qualities of overt speech, such as recognizable identity, gender, pitch, loudness and emotional tone. IRVs were sometimes identified as the readers’ own voices, and sometimes as the voices of other people. Some individuals reported that IRVs were continuous with audible thoughts. Both controllable and uncontrollable IRVs were reported. IRVs may provide evidence for individual variation in imagery vividness and support for inner speech accounts of AVHs. IRVs may be a useful model for studying AVHs in the non-clinical population and need further investigation.