Why:
I went to Alexander Huth's talk on brain decoding and he seems to think internal monologues are the norm and no monologue is a fluke. I think the opposite, and that thinking that monologues are the default is because he (and i) mostly associate with people who have such a monologue (or are the type to break the monologue through hardcore meditation).
I will judge what 'representative' and 'minimal' mean, in good faith. Study in hundreds or thousands with good experimental setup will probably qualify.
Related questions
What do you mean by "minimal"? I don't find myself talking to myself much throughout the day, but it happens, you know, a few times. But I clearly and distinctly do hear a voice in my head based on text that I encounter. Is this minimal? Is minimal that someone simply almost never hears an internal voice at all? <5 times a day or so?
I often ask people if they have an internal monologue. Many say they don't or they have it rarely or not very vividly. I believe there's a whole spectrum to it. For example, some have very vivid linguistic processing, making it easy to answer questions like "What language do you think in?" Others experience it more sporadically, where a monologue only pops up sometimes.
How does this resolve if no such study is conducted within the time frame? NO or N/A?
Edit: and what haired if a study is conducted and finds a higher-than-50% rate of internal monologues? Is that a NO resolution, or does it continue? Is this "at least one study will find X", or "the next high-quality study will find X"?