Chapter 4 Listening & Learning

Content-oriented style

a type of listening style that hones in on intellectual challenges. This style likes to attend to details and think things through.

Action-oriented style

a type of listening style that looks for organization and precision. This style likes neat, concise, error-free presentations.

selective attention

a variation of pseudolistening; listening to only what you want to hear and ignoring the rest.

Time-oriented style

emphasizes efficiency. This style prefers conversations that are quick and to the point.

analyzing

explaining your opinion or describing your experience provides your own perspective on what the speaker has said.

supporting

expressing your agreement with the speaker's opinion or point of view

appreciative listening

listening for pure enjoyment, such as listening to a funny story or Springsteen ;)

inspirational listening

listening to be inspired by what someone is saying, such as when we're taking in a sermon or motivational speech.

Informational listening

listening to learn, such as at work or in class.

terminator statements

phrases that fail to acknowledge a speaker's emotions and thereby shut down the person's opportunity to express them

continuer statements

phrases that identify the emotions a person is experiencing and allow him or her to communicate them further

pseudolistening

pretending to pay attention to someone when you really are not listening; feedback behaviors make it seem as though you're paying attention even though your mind is elsewhere.

Paraphrasing

restating in your own words what the speaker has said, to show that you understand

People-oriented style

a type of listening style attuned to finding common interests with others and discerning their emotions and interests.

Backchanneling

Using facial expressions, nods, vocalizations such as "uh-huh," and verbal statements such as "I understand" and "that's very interesting" to let the speaker know you're paying attention.

confirmation bias

The tendency to pay attention only to information that supports our values and beliefs, while discounting or ignoring info that doesn't.

skepticism

a method of questioning whether a claim is well supported by evidence; it isn't about being cynical or finding fault.

glazing over

actual listening to speaker, but daydreaming and letting our mind wander, mainly because we think so much faster than we speak.

psychological noise

anything else we find distracting, such as when we are hungry or tired, in a hot/cold environment.

noise

anything that interferes with your ability to encode or decode a message

information overload

coined in 1970 by sociologist Alvin Toffler; the state of being overwhelmed by the huge amount of information we take in every day.

advising

communicating advice to the speaker about what he or she should think, feel, or do; most active feedback strategy.

physical noise

consists of actual sound, such as loud music or others talking.

empathizing

conveying to the speaker that you understand and share his/her feelings on the topic being discussed

Stonewalling

silence and lack of expression on your face often signaling a lack of interest in what the speaker is saying.

closed-mindedness

tendency not to listen to something with which you disagree; refusing to consider the merits of a speaker's point if it conflicts with their own views.

empathic concern

the ability to identify how someone else is feeling and to experience those feelings yourself; different from sympathetic listening.

perspective taking

the ability to understand a situation from another's point of view.

Listening

the active process of making meaning out of another person's spoken message

empathic listening

the most challenging form of listening; it occurs when you are trying to identify with the speaker by understanding and experiencing what he or she is thinking or feeling. Requires perspective taking and empathic concern.

competitive interrupting

the practice of using interruptions to take control of the conversation; the goal is to make sure you get to speak more than the other person does and that your ideas and perspectives take priority.

rebuttal tendency

the propensity to debate a speaker's point and formulate a reply while that person is still speaking; thinking about how we will respond, arguing in our minds, and jumping to conclusions before they are finished.

Hearing

the sensory process of receiving and perceiving sounds

vividness effect

the tendency of dramatic, shocking events to distort one's perceptions of reality

critical listening

the type of listening when our goal is to evaluate or analyze what we are hearing. More active than informational listening.