Before we can engage in other steps in the listening process, we must take in stimuli through our senses. In any given communication encounter, it is likely that we will return to the receiving stage many times as we process incoming feedback and new messages. This part of the listening process is more physiological than other parts, which include cognitive and relational elements. We primarily take in information needed for listening through auditory and visual channels. Although we don’t often think about visual cues as part of listening, they do influence how we interpret messages. For example, seeing a person’s face when we hear their voice allows us to take in nonverbal cues from their facial expressions and eye contact. The fact that these visual cues are missing in e-mail, text, and phone interactions presents some difficulties in reading contextual clues.

It is important to consider noise as a factor that influences how we receive messages. Noise interferes primarily with hearing, which is the physical process of receiving stimuli through internal and external components of the ears and eyes, and some interfere with listening, which is the cognitive process of processing the stimuli taken in while hearing. Although hearing leads to listening, they are not the same thing. Environmental noise such as other people talking, the sounds of traffic, and music interfere with the physiological aspects of hearing. Psychological noise like stress and anger interfere primarily with the cognitive processes of listening. We can enhance our ability to receive, and in turn listen, by trying to minimize noise.

Treasure, J. ( 2011 ). 5 Ways to Listen Better. Ted Talk. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSohjlYQI2A. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

Interpreting

During the interpreting stage of listening, we combine the visual and auditory information we receive and try to make meaning out of that information. The interpreting stage engages cognitive and relational processing as we take in informational, contextual, and relational cues and try to connect them in meaningful ways to previous experiences. It is through the interpreting stage that we may begin to understand the stimuli we have received. When we understand something, we are able to attach meaning by connecting information to previous experiences. If we have difficulty interpreting information, meaning we don’t have previous experiences or information to make sense of it, then it is difficult to transfer the information into our long-term memory for later recall. In situations where understanding the information we receive isn’t important or isn’t a goal, this stage may be fairly short or even skipped. After all, we can move something to our long-term memory by repetition and then later recall it without ever having understood it.

Recalling

Our ability to recall information is dependent on some of the physiological limits of how memory works. Overall, our memories are known to be fallible. We forget about half of what we hear immediately after hearing it, recall 35 percent after eight hours, and recall 20 percent after a day.  Our memory consists of multiple “storage units,” including sensory storage, short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory (Hargie, 2011).

Our sensory storage is very large in terms of capacity but limited in terms of length of storage. We can hold large amounts of unsorted visual information but only for about a tenth of a second. By comparison, we can hold large amounts of unsorted auditory information for longer—up to four seconds. This initial memory storage unit doesn’t provide much use for our study of communication, as these large but quickly expiring chunks of sensory data are primarily used in reactionary and instinctual ways.

As stimuli are organized and interpreted, they make their way to our short-term memory where they are either forgotten or transferred to our long-term memory. Our short-term memory has a mental storage capability that can retain stimuli for twenty seconds to one minute. Long-term memory has a mental storage capability to which stimuli in short-term memory can be transferred if they are connected to existing information. Once there, they can be stored indefinitely (Hargie, 2011). Working memory is a temporarily accessed memory storage space that is activated during times of high cognitive demand. When using working memory, we can temporarily store information and process and use it at the same time. This is different from our typical memory function in that information usually has to be transferred to long-term memory before we can call it back up to apply to a current situation. People with good working memories are able to keep recent information in mind, process and apply it to other incoming information. This can be very useful during high-stress situations. A person in control of a command center like the White House Situation Room should have a good working memory in order to take in, organize, evaluate, and then immediately use new information instead of having to wait for that information to make it to their long-term memory and then be retrieved and used.

Although recall is an important part of the listening process, there isn’t a direct correlation between being good at recalling information and being a good listener. Some people have excellent memories and can tell you a very accurate story from many years earlier. Recall is an important part of the listening process because it is most often used to assess listening abilities and effectiveness. Many quizzes and tests in school are based on recall and are often used to assess how well the students comprehended the information presented in class, which is seen as an indication of how well they listened. When recall is our only goal, we excel at it. Experiments have found that people can memorize and later recall a set of faces and names with nearly 100 percent recall when sitting in a quiet lab and asked to do so. However, if there is external noise, visual stimuli, and multiple contextual influences, then we are unable to remember the name of the person we were just introduced to one minute earlier. Even in interpersonal encounters, we rely on recall to test whether or not someone was listening.

Imagine that Arieh is talking to his sister Becca, who is sitting across from him in a restaurant booth. Arieh, annoyed that Becca keeps checking her phone, stops and asks, “Are you listening?” Becca inevitably replies, “Yes,” since we rarely confess to our poor listening habits. Arieh asks, “Well, what did I just say?”

Evaluating

When we evaluate something, we make judgments about its credibility, completeness, and worth. In terms of credibility, we try to determine the degree to which we believe a speaker’s statements are correct and/or true. In terms of completeness, we try to “read between the lines” and evaluate the message in relation to what we know about the topic or situation being discussed. We evaluate the worth of a message by making a value judgment about whether we think the message or idea is good/bad, right/wrong, or desirable/undesirable. All these aspects of evaluation require critical thinking skills, which we must develop over time through our own personal and intellectual development.

Studying communication is a great way to build your critical thinking skills. The field of communication gives you the skills to analyze and critique messages, senders, and contexts. Critical thinking and listening skills also help you take a more proactive role in the communication process rather than being a passive receiver of messages that may not be credible, complete, or worthwhile. One danger within the evaluation stage of listening is when you focus more on the speaker rather than the message. This can quickly become a barrier to effective listening if we begin to prejudge a speaker based on his or her identity or characteristics rather than on the content of his or her message.

Responding

Responding involves sending verbal and nonverbal messages that indicate attentiveness and understanding or a lack thereof. From our earlier discussion of the communication model, you may be able to connect this part of the listening process to feedback. Later, we will learn specific methods to encode and decode the verbal and nonverbal cues sent during the responding stage. We all know from experience some signs that indicate whether a person is paying attention and understanding a message or not.

We send verbal and nonverbal feedback while another person is talking and after they are done. The verbal and nonverbal signals we send while someone is talking can consist of verbal cues like “uh-huh,” “oh,” and “right,” and/or nonverbal cues like direct eye contact, head nods, and leaning forward. Back-channel cues are generally a form of positive feedback that indicates others are actively listening. People also send cues intentionally and unintentionally that indicate they aren’t listening. If another person is looking away, fidgeting, texting, or turning away, we will likely interpret those responses negatively.

Reflection is a responding behaviour that can also show that you understand what was communicated. When you reflect on a message, you state back what you heard the speaker said in your own words.  For example, you might say the following to start off a reflective response: “What I heard you say was…” or “It seems like you’re saying…” You can also ask clarifying questions to get more information. It is often a good idea to pair a paraphrase with a question to keep a conversation flowing. For example, you might pose the following reflection and question pair: “It seems like you believe you were treated unfairly. Is that right?” Or you might ask a stand-alone question like “What did your boss do that made you think he was ‘playing favorites?’” Make sure to reflect and/or ask questions once a person’s turn is over because interrupting can also be interpreted as a sign of not listening. Reflection is also a good tool to use in computer-mediated communication, especially since miscommunication can occur due to a lack of nonverbal and other contextual cues.