Increasing Comprehension

A sender can increase message comprehension in a number of ways. The first is to relate new information to old. Our discussion of schemata has suggested that we make sense of messages by relating them to what we already know. When we encounter new information, we search for schemata that will make sense of it. A skillful message sender helps the receiver find such schemata by using anal­ogy, comparison, and contrast – methods that help receivers interpret new expe­rience in terms of prior meaning structures.

We all have different levels of experience to draw upon, so we all process information at different levels. A fundamental principle of good communica­tion is that effective senders adapt to the learning level of their listen­ers, using familiar, concrete, and clear language and appropriate and unambiguous images. This does not mean that speakers should talk down to an audience, but it does mean that they must make a rea­sonable assessment of audience members' intellectual ability, degree of expertness, and past experience with the topic.

When complex information is presented, it is often necessary to link ideas and to construct interconnected arguments. Use of a clear-cut organizational pat­tern that guides a receiver through a message enhances comprehension. Whether we are reading an article, listening to a story, or hearing a joke, we expect the mes­sage to be delivered in a logical order. Organization is as important in a comedy routine as it is in a persuasive speech. The organizational patterns used are rela­tively informal in some kinds of communication (such as everyday conversa­tion) and relatively formal in others (such as a news broadcast), yet some degree of structure is always necessary. All communication must exhibit coherence.

Relatively informal, interactive discourse such as conversation depends less on formal structure because direct feedback is possible. Indeed, message comprehension can be increased by providing opportunities for feedback. A good com­municator watches receivers for signs of understanding. If possible, he or she encourages receivers to state their understandings ex­plicitly. A person asks a friend, “Do you understand what I mean? Have you ever felt like that?” and encour­ages the friend to respond. A person on duty in an in­formation booth offers directions and then listens to make sure they are dear as they are repeated back. A teacher quizzes students to see whether or not they understand. In each case the communicator is prepared to offer more informa­tion if the original message was unclear.

Ensuring Acceptance

A receiver may understand what is said but may still block out or dismiss a mes­sage. Effective senders do their best to ensure that receivers accept message content as worthwhile or relevant. One way to increase acceptance is to show receivers how the information presented fits with other elements in their belief systems. Most of us find it difficult to accept information that contradicts prior beliefs, attitudes, and values. Often our first response is to discount that information. If you were to hear something shockingly negative about a close and respected friend, you probably wouldn't believe it – at least not initially. If you were to take a course with a pro­fessor who contradicts everything you have been taught, you would not know whom to believe. To accept radi­cally new information, receivers often must abandon or reorganize old beliefs and values; this is usually a difficult process. Senders can make this process easi­er by showing how new information is supported by old beliefs or, when cogni­tive realignment is necessary, by helping receivers reorganize belief structures.

Acceptable messages offer receivers an incentive. It is important that receivers see value in a message. Therefore, message content should offer some reward to receivers; receivers should understand why the information conveyed is useful to them. After all, message processing takes time and effort, and receivers see no reason to expend that time and effort on irrelevant or erroneous messages.

Persuasion theorists called cognitive response theorists point out that people accept messages not on the basis of what a speaker says but on the basis of their own responses to the speaker’s message. When I listen carefully to a speaker, I hold a kind of internal conversation with myself. I agree or disagree,

supplying supporting examples or counterarguments. These cognitive responses ultimately convince me to accept or reject the speaker's message. The cognitive response principle suggests that senders who wish to increase acceptance should en­courage favorable cognitive responses. This is often achieved by asking receivers to become actively involved in mes­sage processing. Teachers, for example, may give students “hands-on” experience with experiments or exercises, be­cause what people find out for themselves is often more powerfully convincing than what they are told. Therapists may use role-playing for the same reason. Public speakers may ask audience members rhetorical questions to make them think about a topic.

Enhancing Retention and Retrieval

Have you ever listened with interest to a message, understood and accepted it, yet later had trouble remembering it? This experience points to a final aspect of message processing: retention and retrieval. Retention is the accurate storage of information; retrieval is the process of accessing stored information at the proper time. When messages are memorable, both processes occur. But what makes a message memorable?

First, active rehearsal and repetition make a message more memorable. Senders can encourage message retention by using repetition within the message, by asking questions during a message that encourage receivers to repeat message elements mentally, or by providing follow-up activities or exercises that re­inforce information rehearsal. Another way to increase message recall is to make information relevant to receivers’ experiences. Information related to self-perceptions appears to be stored more readily than less relevant information. Informa­tion relevant to receivers will also be retrieved more easily.

Message retrieval is often “triggered” by some external stimulus. We pass a restaurant and suddenly remember that we were supposed to meet a friend for lunch. We see an acquaintance jogging and suddenly recall our good intentions to exercise more often. If senders tie message proposals to appropriate triggers, infor­mation retrieval can be increased. Let’s look at an example. A speaker wants chil­dren to refuse rides from strangers. To make sure the children remember to say no and run away, the speaker gets the children to role-play. He or she may ask the children, “What should you do when you see a strange car drive up?” and may rehearse their reply or may even take the children outside and have a part­ner pretend to be a stranger. In this way, the response of saying no and running away is tied to a specific stimulus trigger. The children know when and under what circumstances to remember the desired response.

Finally, in order to increase both retention and retrieval, messages should be summarized in simple but vivid style. When we remember information, we do not remember it exactly as it was said. We remember it in our own ways. Often we simplify it, cutting out inessential details, retaining only the essence of the message. Of course, when left to do this ourselves, we may choose the wrong information to remember. Effective senders cut down on distortion by supplying us with simple points to take away with us. The simpler and more vivid these summaries are, the better we will retain them. Slogans, jingles, and alliterative lists, for example, are easily stored and retrieved, as are emotionally charged exam­ples and vivid images. To ensure retention, ending on a strong note is particu­larly important.

So far, we have looked at this problem from the point of view of the sender, and we have reviewed ways to make messages interesting, clear, con­vincing, and memorable. These methods are not foolproof, of course. If a re­ceiver decides not to listen, even a great speaker is powerless. Communication is a cooperative enterprise, after all, and both partners bear responsibilities. In the final section of this chapter, we'll look at one of the most important communication skills: listening.

Listening: How Receivers Can Improve Decoding

When we think of communication we almost always think about message sending. We picture people conversing or giving public speeches or perhaps writing letters. We neglect the other, equally important half of communication: listening. Yet studies show that we spend more time listening than engaging in any other form of communication. And studies also show that most of us have very poor listening skills.

Why do we listen so poorly? One answer lies in our cultural values. As Americans, we value activity and independence. We tend to believe that actively expressing our own ideas is more valuable than passively attending to others’ messages. This view reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of listening. Al­though listening may seem passive, it is not. While we listen, we actively create meaning and construct our own versions of reality. Seen in this light, listening is one of the most important forms of communication.

Because of the low value our culture places on listen­ing, most of us have learned to be poor listeners. Parents and teachers make sure we develop skill in reading, writing, and speaking. Listening, however, is usually something we have to learn on our own, and the models we learn from are often not very good. Florence Wolff and her colleagues tell us that our parents often train us to be “nonlisteners”. When parents tell a child, “Don’t pay any attention to that,” or, “I don’t want to hear that in this family” they model nonlistening. By not paying attention or by interrupting each other in mid-sentence, parents tell us that it’s not important to hear others out. In school, the situation is almost as bad. Teachers, themselves untrained in listening, make up for students’ listening deficiencies by patiently repeating themselves. By failing to demand high levels of listening performance, they too may be reinforcing nonlistening.

Luckily, listening can be improved, just as we have learned to be poor lis­teners, we can learn to be more effective ones. By becoming more aware of the listening process and by practicing listening skills, we can improve our listening effectiveness enormously.

What Is Listening?

For our purposes, we can define listening as the process whereby orally com­municated messages are attended to, recognized, and interpreted in light of needs and experiences, and stored for future use. This definition emphasizes that when we listen we assign meaning to stimuli and that in assigning meaning we are influenced by prior habits, expectations, and desires. Listening, then, is an active, creative process governed by the listener’s inner state.

Listening and Hearing

Although hearing is a necessary part of listening, it is only one part of this com­plex process. Hearing is a physiological process that occurs when sound waves are translated into electrical impulses that are then processed by the central ner­vous system. Hearing is the sensing of external aural data. Listening, on the other hand, goes much further. First, it involves selecting those sensations that are sent on for further processing and filtering out those that are extraneous. Second, it involves labeling, organizing, and assigning meaning to stimuli that have cap­tured our attention. Finally, listening involves storing these created meanings in retrievable form. If any of these processes is short-circuited, listening fails.