When is it better to think without words?

I don't have an "inner monologue" and don't think in words, only in images, but I've never experienced what this author is describing in terms of "nonsense words" or "hand vibrations".

I was with some friends that were in a band together, and we got thinking about this topic, and ended up arranging ourselves from least verbal to most verbal. I was on one end, where all of my thoughts appear as emotions or images; on the other end was our bassist, who experienced his thoughts as fully formed sentences. He said when he's getting to a difficult passage in a song the words "better focus here, don't mess up" will ring out in his head. He also said he has fully dictated mental conversations with himself.

I also read very quickly because I look at the shape of paragraphs and assemble the word-shapes into mental images and pick up meaning that way; high speed, but low comprehension. I struggle greatly to read philosophy because it's quite difficult to visualize. My wife reads slowly but hears every word in her head; her comprehension is much higher. I can do high comprehension reading by slowing down and looking at every word, but it feels like holding back an excitable dog.

I’m aphantasic with no mental imagery at all so my inner experience could not be more different: it’s strange to explain, but I experience “unvocalized” language, which means the words are sort of just there without “hearing” them in my head—-I don’t have inner sound at all either and so the words don’t have an accent, for example. My thought moves at a speed much faster than speaking and I can read fast with high comprehension—-but it takes me incredible effort to remember the color of someone’s eyes, for example. I more or less skip descriptions in novels and prefer to read philosophy.

I’ve always found it interesting that in programming communities the two extremes of aphantasic and hyperphantasic seem to both be very overrepresented.

What happens when you read descriptions if you can't skip over them?

I remember them for as long as I read it and then it goes away.

It always baffled me when a movie adaptation of a book came out and people were really upset that the characters looked wrong. And I was just "... you remember what the people in books look like??". It turns out they do.

I don't.

When I read a book, I kinda retain the "feeling" of the characters and maybe one or two visual traits. I can read thousands of pages of a character's adventures and I can maybe tell you their general body type and clothing - if they have an "uniform" they tend to wear.

I've read all 5 books of The Stormlight Archive and I couldn't tell you what Kaladin looks like. I have no visual recollection of his hair colour, eye colour, skin tone or body type.

Yeah I never understood descriptions or who the intended audience of those long winded descriptive words is, but if other people have this magical capability of getting visual imagery out of it, I guess sure. It is hard to believe, but it must be the case. It is so hard to fathom that other people process things so differently, but I guess it can also explain a lot.