River seeing alternative conversations

Probably seeing their true emotions manifested as conversations.

Can't stop the signal.

I think she can read non-verbal communication in such an accurate way that she can practically read people's thoughts. That wouldn't explain why she knew the story of the mute girl though. Maybe she can actually read minds 

Without even getting into the movie,from internal evidence alone the first several episodes demonstrate that River can in fact read minds. It seems that she is most adept at reading surface thoughts, and that she has a limited range (although that range is somewhat greater than her sight radius.)

If you go episode by episode, River very consistently sees trouble, and help coming a half-second or so before she has any physical reason to. For example in episode three when she can't sleep because 'there's too much screaming' that's her picking up the surface thoughts of the survivor of the reaver attack. That's why just a few minutes later she wandered to where the bodies were hanging from the ceiling finding them before Mal and Zoe.

Later she says "he's coming back" to which simon thinks she's talking about the rest of the crew. However she meant the surviving crewman. Sure enough she uses this advance warning to prevent simon from going back into the ship, preventing him from being killed by the crewman.

There are lots more examples of her knowing that help, or harm is coming in later episodes, eventually in episode 14 the crew has a sit-down chat about river, and it is explicitly stated that she can read minds. Until that point while some members of the crew may have suspected this fact, they did not openly acknowledge it as being reality.


From the evidence presented in the show/movie it is arguable whether or not River can do in-depth memory probes. Even when it is arguable that she is doing just that such as in episode 4 when river hustles badger by pretending to be from his home area, that could be her just picking up one or two thoughts about his criminal intent and making some good guesses, as simon and the other crew members saw no reason to suspect her of being a reader at that point (honestly it's not a hard guess with how badger carries himself.)

In the movie, while she does in fact learn of the existence of miranda from the alliance senator, we don't know if she learned that info from a scan of his surface thoughts or a full read. For one he might just have been pre-occupied with it at the time of meeting her. For another, there is a popular fan-theory that the 'whedonverse' is connected. According to this theory, River Tam is of all things the newest slayer (a la buffy the vampire slayer). As the slayer's job is well, to kill scary nasty things that go bump in the night like i don't know.... Reavers, he might have been thinking about their creation in connection to River being their last, best hope in defeating them. )

Fan theories aside, we just don't know how deep she can read into other's thoughts. We just know that she CAN, and she can do it from a good distance away. (most likely somewhere between a few hundred feet at worst, or a few miles at best).