I do have an inner monologue, but I do make many decisions non-verbally. I often visualize actions and their consequences, in the context of my internal state. When I’m thirsty I consider the drinks available nearby and imagine their taste. In the morning coffee feels most tempting, unless I’ve already had a few cups - in that case drinking more would leave me feeling worse, not better. After a workout, a glass of water is the most expedient way to quench the thirst. It is similar when I write a piece of code or design a graphic. I look at the code and consider various possible transformations and additions, and prefer ones that move me closer to my goal, or at least make any sort of improvement. It’s basically a weighing of imagined possible world-states (and self-states), not a discussion.
I struggle to imagine how people can find the time to consider all of these trivial choices verbally - in my case it all happens almost instantaneously and the whole process is easy to miss. I also don’t see what the monologue adds to the process - just skip this part and make the decision!
That said, I do use an inner voice when writing, preparing what to say to someone, etc. and I feel like I struggle with this way of thinking much more.
I had this for the longest time. Very imbalanced academic performance because I could get the answer and understood a lot of things, but had huge trouble with written work. That is, converting the thought process into a linear stream of words and sentences. I suppose it's like serialization of objects in memory.
Edit: maybe this is like the difference between a diffusion model and a "next token" model. I always feel a need to jump around and iteratively refine the whole picture at once. Hard to maintain focus.
But taking a step back, this process of converting reasoning tied to experienced consequences into words that have relatively stable meaning and interpretation over generations is what is "academic".
Without that, one does not learn quickly what another human already thought and tried out in the past (2 hours or 2 years or 2 millenia ago, does not matter), the civilization never progresses to the point it has, and we reinvent all the same things repeatedly ("look ma, I strapped a rock to a stick and now I can bash lion's head in").
So really, if you struggle with this part of the process, you'd need to rely on somebody else who can understand your "invention" as well as you do, and can do a good job of putting it into words.
Really, this is what makes the academic process, well, academic.
The top-level comment tried to distinguish betweeen symbolic processing — verbal and non-verbal — as really being "thought", and other cognition/reasoning not.
I believe many of the things you bring up still involve symbolic reasoning (eg. how do you decide when is too much coffee if you do not think in representation of "I had N or too-many"? how do you consider code transformations unless you think in terms of the structure you have and you want to get to?).
It's no surprise that one is good with one language and sucks at the other, though: otherwise, we'd pick up new languages much faster. And not struggle as much with different types of languages as much (both spoken — think tonal vs not, or Hungarian vs anything else ;) — and programming — think procedural vs functional).
So spoken/written languages are one symbolic way to express our internal cognition, but even visual reasoning can be symbolic (think non-formal and formal flowcharts, graphs, diagrams... eg. things like UML or algorithm boxes use precisely defined symbols, but they don't have to be as precise to be happening).
It is a question if it is useful to make a distinction between all reasoning and that particular type of reasoning, and reuse a common, related word ("thinking", "thought"), or not?
I struggle to imagine how people can find the time to consider all of these trivial choices verbally - in my case it all happens almost instantaneously and the whole process is easy to miss. I also don’t see what the monologue adds to the process - just skip this part and make the decision!
That said, I do use an inner voice when writing, preparing what to say to someone, etc. and I feel like I struggle with this way of thinking much more.