Roland Barthes, a linguist, distinguishes between hearing and listening, stating, "Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act." Barthes also states that "whereas for centuries listening could be defined as an intentional act of audition...today it is granted the power (and virtually the function) of playing over unknown spaces " including unconscious forms.[1] Hearing is always occurring, most of the time subconsciously. Listening is the interpretative action taken by the listener in order to understand and potentially make meaning out of the sound waves. Listening can be understood on three levels: alerting, deciphering, and an understanding of how the sound is produced and how the sound affects the listener.[2]
Alerting, the first level, does nothing to distinguish human from animal. At the alerting level one merely picks up on certain environmental sound cues. While discussing this level, Barthes mentions the idea of territory being demarcated by sounds. This is best explained using the example of one's home. One's home, for instance, has certain sounds associated with it that make it familiar and comfortable. An intrusion sound (e.g. a squeaking door or floorboard, a breaking window) alerts the dweller of the home to the potential danger.
In a metaphorical way, deciphering, the second level, is to listening what digestion is to eating. An example of this level is that of a child waiting for the sound of his mother's return home. In this scenario the child is waiting to pick up on sound cues (e.g. jingling keys, the turn of the doorknob, etc.) that will mark his mother's approach.
Understanding, the third level of listening, means knowing how what one says will affect another. This sort of listening is important in psychoanalysis. Barthes states that the psychoanalyst must turn off their judgement while listening to the analysand in order to communicate with their patient's unconscious in an unbiased fashion.
However, in contrast to the distinct levels of listening listed above, it must be understood that they all function within the same plane, and sometimes all at once. Specifically the second and third levels, which overlap vastly, can be intertwined in that obtaining, understanding and deriving meaning are part of the same process. In that the child, upon hearing the doorknob turn (obtaining), can almost automatically assume that someone is at the door (deriving meaning).
Listening differs from obeying. Parents may commonly conflate the two, by telling a disobedient child that he "didn't listen to me". However, a person who receives and understands information or an instruction, and then chooses not to comply with it or to agree to it, has listened to the speaker, even though the result is not what the speaker wanted.
Active listening
Active listening is a communication technique used in counselling, training and conflict resolution, which requires the listener to feed back what they hear to the speaker, by way of re-stating or paraphrasing what they have heard in their own words, to confirm what they have heard and moreover, to confirm the understanding of both parties.[citation needed]
Contents
Comprehending
Comprehension is "shared meaning between parties in a communication transaction". This is the first step in the listening process. The second challenge is being able to discern breaks between discernible words, or speech segmentation. This becomes significantly more difficult with an unfamiliar language because the speech sounds blend together into a continuous jumble.Retaining
This is the second step in the listening process. Memory is essential to the listening process because the information we retain when involved in the listening process is how we create meaning from words. We depend on our memory to fill in the blanks when we're listening. Because everyone has different memories, the speaker and the listener may attach different meanings to the same statement. However, our memories are fallible and we can't remember everything that we've ever listened to. There are many reasons why we forget some information that we've received. The first is cramming. When you cram there is a lot of information entered into your short term memory dach. Shortly after cramming, when you don't need the information anymore, it is purged from your brain before it can be transferred into your long term memory. The second reason is that you aren't paying attention when you receive the information. Alternatively, when you receive the information you may not attach importance to it, so it loses its meaning. A fourth reason is at the time the information was received you lacked motivation to listen carefully to better remember it. Using information immediately after receiving it enhances information retention and lessens the forgetting curve (the rate at which we no longer retain information in our memory). Retention is lessened when we engage in mindless listening, where little effort is made to listen to a speaker's message. Mindful listening is active listening.Responding
Listening is an interaction between speaker and listener.[citation needed] It adds action to a normally passive process.[citation needed]Tactic
Active listening involves the listener observing the speaker's behavior and body language.[citation needed] Having the ability to interpret a person's body language lets the listener develop a more accurate understanding of the speaker's message.[1] Having heard, the listener may then paraphrase the speaker's words. It is important to note that the listener is not necessarily agreeing with the speaker—simply stating what was said.Individuals in conflict often contradict each other.[citation needed] Ambushing occurs when one listens to someone else's argument for its weaknesses and ignore its strengths.[2] This may include a distortion of the speaker’s argument to gain a competitive advantage. On the other hand, if one finds that the other party understands, an atmosphere of cooperation can be created.[3]
In the book Leader Effectiveness Training, Thomas Gordon, who coined the term "active listening,"[4] states "Active listening is certainly not complex. Listeners need only restate, in their own language, their impression of the expression of the sender. ... Still, learning to do Active Listening well is a rather difficult task ..."[5]
Use
Active listening is used in a wide variety of situations, including public interest advocacy, community organizing, tutoring,[6] medical workers talking to patients,[7] HIV counseling,[8] helping suicidal persons,[9] management,[10] counseling[citation needed] and journalistic[citation needed] settings. In groups it may aid in reaching consensus.[citation needed] It may also be used in casual conversation or small talk to build understanding, though this can be interpreted as condescending.[citation needed]A listener can use several degrees of active listening, each resulting in a different quality of communication.[citation needed]
The proper use of active listening results in getting people to open up, avoiding misunderstandings, resolving conflict, and building trust.[11] In a medical context, benefits may include increased patient satisfaction,[7] improved cross-cultural communication,[12] improved outcomes,[7] or decreased litigation.[13]
Active listening can be lifted by the active listening observation scale.[14]
Barriers to active listening
Barriers to active listening are those which create hindrance in effective communication between the speaker and listener. Some of the barriers are due to hungriness or tiredness of the listener due to which a listener gets irritate and don't wants listen to the speaker. Sometime it is due to the language which is used by the speaker (use of high sounding and bombastic words) which can lead to ambiguity and finally it affects the active listening. Such barriers include distractions, trigger words, vocabulary, and limited attention span.[15]Listening barriers may be psychological (e.g. emotions) or physical (e.g. noise and visual distraction).[citation needed]
Shift response
The first of these is the shift response which is the general tendency in a conversation to affix the attention to you.[citation needed] This is a type of conversational narcissism; the tendency of listeners to turn the topic of conversations to themselves without showing sustained interest in others listening.[16] A support response is the opposite of a shift response; it is an attention giving method and a cooperative effort to focus the conversational attention on the other person. Instead of being me-oriented like shift response, it is we-oriented.[17] It is the response most likely to be used by a competent communicator[2]Understanding of Non-verbal cues
Ineffective listeners are unaware of non-verbal cues, although they dramatically affect how people listen. To a certain extent, it is also a perceptual barrier.As much as 93 percent of people attitudes are formed by non-verbal cues. This should help one to avoid undue influence from non-verbal communication. In most of the cases, the listener does not understand the non-verbal cues, which the speaker is using. A person shows fingers to emphasize a point, the listener may however comprehend that the speaker may put that finger in his eyes. Overuse of non-verbal cues also create distortion and the listeners may be confused for getting the correct meaning [18]Overcoming listening barriers
To use the active listening technique to improve interpersonal communication, one puts personal emotions aside during the conversation, asks questions and paraphrases back to the speaker to clarify understanding, and one also tries to overcome all types of environment distractions.[citation needed] Judging or arguing prematurely is a result of holding onto a strict personal opinion.[19] This hinders the ability to be able to listen closely to what is being said.[citation needed] Eye contact and appropriate body languages are seen as important components to active listening.[citation needed] The stress and intonation may also keep them active and away from distractions.[citation needed]Misconceptions about listening
There are several misconceptions about listening.[citation needed] We have no control over what we hear.[citation needed] Listening on the other hand is an active process that constructs meaning from both verbal and nonverbal messages.[2]Active listening in music
Active Listening has been developed as a concept in music and technology by François Pachet, researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Paris. Active listening in music refers to the idea that listeners can be given some degree of control on the music they listen to, by means of technological applications mainly based on artificial intelligence and information theory techniques, by opposition to traditional listening, in which the musical media is played passively by some neutral device [20][21][22]Criticism
A Munich-based marital therapy study conducted by Dr. Kurt Hahlweg and associates found that even after employing active listening techniques in the context of couple's therapy, the typical couple was still distressed.[23] Active listening was criticized by John Gottman's The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work as being of limited usefulness: "Active listening asks couples to perform emotional Olympic-level emotional gymnastics when their relationship can barely walk. . . . After studying some 650 couples and tracking the fate of their marriages for up to fourteen years, we now understand that this approach to counseling doesn't work, not just because it's nearly impossible for most couples to do well, but more importantly because successful conflict resolution isn't what makes marriages succeed. One of the most startling findings of our research is that most couples who have maintained happy marriages rarely do anything that even partly resembles active listening when they're upset."[24]Robert F. Scuka defends active listening by arguing that "a careful reading of the Hahlweg et al. (1984) study reveals that Gottman cites only certain (one-sided) results from the study. He also overlooks several important considerations that call into question his implied dismissal of the RE model as a legitimate therapeutic intervention for distressed couples."[25]
See also
- Appreciative listening
- Auditory processing disorder
- Four-sides model
- Informational listening
- Nonviolent Communication
- Reflective listening
- Workplace listening
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