Active Listening in Peer Interviews: The Influence of Message Paraphrasing on Perceptions of Listening Skill

Perhaps no communication skill is identified as regularly as active listening in training programs across a variety of disciplines and activities. Yet little empirical research has examined specific elements of active listening responses in terms of their effectiveness in achieving desired interpersonal outcomes. This study reports an experiment designed to test the influence of a specific element of active listening responses, namely, the message paraphrase. One hundred and eighty undergraduate students participated in peer interviews in which they received either a paraphrased reflection or a simple acknowledgement in response to their expressed opinions regarding comprehensive examinations. The results of data analysis indicated that message paraphrases were associated with the social attractiveness of the listener but were not associated with participants' conversational satisfaction or perceptions of feeling understood by the listener.     

Importance of Effective Listening Infomercial

This article details an activity intended for use in a course with a unit on effective listening, including listening courses, public speaking, and interpersonal communication. Students will explain the importance of effective and active listening for a target audience by producing an infomercial for a product or service which they design     

Bivariate and Multivariate Associations between Trait Listening Goals and Trait Communicator Preferences

This article provides validity evidence for a measure of listening goals by showing theoretically consistent relationships with an existing communication preference questionnaire. Participants (N = 257) were administered trait measures for listening goals and communicator preferences. The four listening goals—relational, task-oriented, analytical, and critical—are related to seven communicator preferences: interpersonal, intrapersonal, auditory, visual-spatial, kinesthetic, linguistic, and logical. These results are supportive of hypotheses, although there were some contradictory findings and some findings were not hypothesized. Results of multivariate correlation estimates portray a listening profile centered on relational goals and interpersonal communicator preferences. Although acknowledging several limitations, results offer theoretical and practical guidance for future work, specifically how this information may be of help to individuals, couples, and counselors in utilizing relational goals and making more careful communicative choices.     

Toward a Theory and Practice of Organizational Listening

While there is an important and growing body of research literature on listening, it is predominantly focused on interpersonal listening. Meanwhile, in contemporary industrial and postindustrial societies, organizations play a central role in society and the lives of citizens. People need to interact on a daily basis with government departments and agencies, corporations, and a plethora of nongovernment and nonprofit organizations. Despite theorization of the disciplinary practices of public relations and corporate, organizational, government, and political communication as two-way communication involving dialogue and engagement with stakeholders and publics, a transdisciplinary literature review of these fields reveals that little attention is paid to listening. In addition to identifying this gap in the literature, this article reports empirical research that shows organizations listen sporadically, often poorly, and sometimes not at all. To address this socially and politically significant gap, this analysis makes recommendations as a contribution to a theory and practice of organizational listening.     

Listening in Mediated Contexts: Introduction to a Special Issue

New communication technologies, applications, and software have fundamentally changed how we communicate. However, listening research and scholarship has not kept pace – conceptually, methodologically, or theoretically – with this emerging area of research. This special issue takes an important step toward addressing the intricacies and complexities associated with mediated listening.     

Exploring the Relationship between Listening Style Preference and Personality

Previous listening research has found a variety of personality traits linked to listening style. Researchers in temperament and personality often address the association between temperament type, personality, and social behavior (e.g., communication preferences, miscommunication, and conflict). This study extends this research. Among the results: People Listening Style is moderately associated with the Myers-Briggs Personality Types Feeling and Intuiting. Additional correlational results are presented.     

In Recognition of Their Desperation: Sonic Relationality and the Work of Deep Listening

This essay places composer Pauline Oliveros’s philosophy and practice of Deep Listening in conversation with analytic theories of listening in a duet that explores one central question: What can listening do? Thinking through the impact of cultivated listening practices on the sensorium, the relational implications of listening across difference, and the centrality of practices of listening to the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis as well as the transformational capacity of performance, this essay claims Oliveros as a practitioner and theorist of a central psychoanalytic practice: listening. Deep Listening has the capacity to act as an amplifier for extending the reach of analytic listening beyond the clinic into an expanded cultural field. Likewise, psychoanalytic thinking allows for a rich exploration of the interpersonal and intrapsychic dynamics of Oliveros’s sonic meditations as they resonate in the circuits between the psyche and the social. Her 1970 composition To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe In Recognition of Their Desperation acts as a case study for exploring the dynamics of feminist listening.     

E-Priming the Listener: Sensitizing Students to Listening for Verbal Aggression

This paper argues that the concept of E-Prime (E′) holds practical benefits to effective listening for students of interpersonal communication. In advancing this argument, the paper includes a concise review of relevant literature on E-Prime, defensiveness, and conflict, with particular emphasis on verbal aggression. The literature demonstrates that traditional imperatives to reduce listener defensiveness need careful consideration. In fact, offering unqualified assertions for listeners to reduce defensiveness may place students at undue risk for harm. This paper reviews pedagogical uses of E-Prime in interpersonal communication courses.     

Listening Education in the 21st Century

The 1999 tragic shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, served as a wake-up call for Americans that we need to listen to our teenagers. How unfortunate it is that it takes a tragedy to reawaken educational interest in listening as a crucial component of human communication behavior. As we enter the 21^st Century, this article re-emphasizes the crucial role listening plays in human communication.     

Factors Underlying Supervisors' Perceptions of Their Own Listening Behavior

The study reported here is an exploratory factor analysis of supervisors' perceptions of their own listening behavior. A forty item questionnaire was developed to assess supervisors' perceptions of their on the job listening behaviors. Seven first order factors were identified as underlying these perceptions: attending, clarifying, responding, discriminating and evaluating, recalling, affiliating and accomodating. In addition, two second-order factors were found to undergird the seven factor structure: listening to gain information accurately and listening to create a supportive interpersonal environment     

Listening and Referring to Voices: Students' Repertory in Educational Settings

When we construct our knowledge in educational settings we usually listen to many different voices, mediated through teachers, classmates, books, films, and so on. Eight students in teacher training were videotaped for 12 hours of group talks with a tutor over a six-month period. The overall purpose of the study was to describe the polyphonic nature of the discursive field of education and the interplay between various contexts and contextual resources in that social interaction.

The concept of intertextuality is adopted as a method to identify the polyphony of different voices. The explicit reported long-term listening is called the student's voice response, showing the repertory of contextual resources in use. Results from the study indicate that some of the students have a broad and some a narrow listening repertory when it comes to reported listening. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Listening in a Multilingual World: The Challenges of Second Language (L2) Listening

Research into language acquisition and oral language use was examined in order to identify key factors that contribute to the successful acquisition of second language (L2) listening ability. The factors were grouped into three major domains: affective, cognitive, and interpersonal. It is claimed that in each domain, proficient L2 listeners have developed strategies, that is, plans of conscious action, in order to address persistent challenges of L2 acquisition. For the affective domain, the strategies concern development of resilience in order to maintain long-term motivation and investment of identity as an active user of the L2. For the cognitive domain, the strategies involve relearning the phonological system of the L2 as an independent system in order to counteract native language influences and using compensation tactics to supplement the influences of semantic organization of one’s native language. For the interpersonal domain, the strategies involve accommodation to communication styles and a task orientation to interaction. Research is reviewed from cognitive psychology, neurolinguistics, pragmatics, bilingualism studies, and language pedagogy, with the aim of identifying particular obstacles faced by L2 listeners and practical approaches used to cope with them.     

Relational Listening II: Form & Variation across Social and Personal Relationships

This research examines, and provides theoretical extension regarding, those processes that characterize the construct of relational listening. First, a rationale for the continued examination of listening as everyday relational activity is provided. Second, data generated among relational partners representing (a) acquaintance, (b) friend, (c) good friend, (d) best friend, (e) romantic friend, and (f) relative relationships are analyzed in light of a grounded theoretical model of relational listening (Halone & Pecchioni, in press). Finally, implications for theory and research concerning listening and relational communication are discussed. Assessing relational listening across an array of social and personal relationships concurrently accomplishes objectives of (a) conceptually extending the knowledge base on relational listening while (b) providing scholars with comparative insight into those processes that govern the course and conduct of everyday relating.     

Grounding Listening: The Limitations of Theory

The role and limitations of scientific theory in listening research is explored. The researcher as person is found to be intricately involved as creative, interpretive author of concepts, hypotheses, arguments and conclusions. Nor can the researcher ignore their own social and cultural life-world origins. Consequently the importance of the social context and culture assumed by the researcher is detailed. Theory is discussed and its general limitations explicated. Overall, research in social sciences, such as listening, is at base social.     

Listening/Nonverbal Communication Training

Multiculturalism increases communities' hopes of reducing racism and increasing productivity. Diversity training, however, is receiving negative criticism. Still, effective communication is viewed as critical. Thus, training in this area is encouraged. Cultural understanding and communication skills provide frameworks for developing tolerance and understanding. This study was conducted to provide more applied research to multicultural diversity with applications for business and education. Further, the purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of listening/nonverbal communication training on an individual's level of multicultural sensitivity. A statistically significant relationship was found between the listening/nonverbal communication training used in this study and multicultural sensitivity.     

Listening in the Business Context: Reviewing the State of Research

The central role of listening in leadership has been the subject of increasing attention in recent years. In leadership studies, listening is being theorized as an essential dimension to effective leadership. Those seeking an elected office also have come to appreciate the centrality of listening by engaging in listening-centered events. However, listening leadership requires more than just the presence of listening. Listening and leadership must be connected. Using President Jimmy Carter and his July 15, 1979 “Address to the Nation on Energy and National Goals” as a case study, this essay explores the concept of listening leadership during the evolution and delivery of that speech. This essay argues that in the development and delivery of Carter's speech, the topic of listening was placed front and center for and by the President. However, Carter failed to balance the listening component of leadership with other characteristics which ultimately bifurcated listening from his role as a leader.     

Listening in Context: Religion and Spirituality

A review of the literature on listening as related to the contexts of religion and spirituality suggests that while religious/spiritual groups and individuals recognize listening as a communication and spiritual construct and claim to practice listening, the views of what constitutes listening vary greatly. In their discussions of listening, writers focus primarily on practicing listening and on aspects of the greater listening process rather than on a well-grounded understanding of how listening is related to religion and spirituality. Many of the reports of the role of listening are based on untested assumptions; thus, researchers are encouraged to investigate the role of listening in religion and spirituality with scientifically based methods.     

Intercultural Listening: Measuring Listening Concepts with the LCI-R

Listening is an integral part of communication, yet more research is conducted on the speaker as opposed to the listener. Previous research established a general schema of listening as a concept-driven behavior with four factors (Imhof & Janusik, 2006). Further testing by Bodie (2010) confirmed the factor structure and reduced the number of items from 33 to 15 (LCI-R). What is not known is whether the constructs are consistent across cultures. This study investigates whether the LCI-R can fit independent data comprising samples from the United States, Europe, and Japan. Results show that the instrument can be used cross-culturally when listening concepts are of interest and need to be measured.     

Listening Styles: Sex Differences in Perceptions of Self and others

Historically, more time has been spent on teaching speaking than listening, even though listening is the communication activity in which we spend most of our time. Difficulties in teaching include the lack of a single definition or model of listening. Additionally, since listening is both cognitive and behavioral, effectiveness is often evaluated by what students know as opposed to what students do. This article provides a comprehensive look at what is known about teaching listening in both the college and corporate classrooms. Finally, it proposes the educational concept of Teacher Research to develop further theories on how to teach listening more effectively.     

Examining the Notion of Listening Subskill Divisibility and its Implications for Second Language Listening

The testing and teaching of listening has been partially guided by the notion of subskills, or a set of listening abilities that are needed for achieving successful comprehension and utilization of the information from listening texts. Although this notion came about mainly through applications of theoretical perspectives from psychology and communication studies, the actual divisibility of the subskills has rarely been examined. This article reports an attempt to do so by using data from the answers of 916 test takers of a retired version of the Michigan English Language Assessment Battery listening test. First, an iterative content analysis of items was carried out, identifying five key subskills. Next, the discriminability of subskills was examined through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Five independent measurement models representing the subskills were evaluated. The overall CFA model comprising the measurement models showed excessively high correlations among factors. Further tests through CFA resolved the inadmissible correlations, though the high correlations persisted. Finally, we made 23 aggregate-level items which were used in a higher-order model, which induced best fit indices and resolved the inadmissible estimates. The results show that the subskills in the test were empirically divisible, lending support to scholarly attempts in discussing components in the listening construct for the purpose of teaching and assessment.