Effective Listening Skills

            Many people consider listening and hearing to be the same, when they are not. (2015), hearing is the physiological ability to perceive the presence of sounds in the environment, while listening occurs when the brain reconstructs these electrochemical impulses into a representation of the original sound and then gives them meaning. There are many challenges to effective listening, as well as many different types. It can also be used to support others. I have had a recent experience with effective listening as well. When it comes to effective listening, there are many misconceptions, like the fact that listening and hearing are not the same, explained above. Successful listening consists of four stages: attending, understanding, responding, and remembering. To attend, you must pay attention to a signal. When you are "understanding", you make sense of the message. When it comes to responding, you give observable feedback to the speaker. Lastly, when you are remembering, you recall previously introduced information.
             While many thing listening is a natural process, it is not. Hearing, on the other hand, is. Listening is a learned skill that everyone has obtained, but few do it well. Along with this, you may not receive the message the same way your neighbor has. Many factors go into this interpretation: physiological factors, social roles, cultural backgrounds, personal interests, and needs. These distort these encoded messages as uniquely different messages. There are always challenges to effective listening. It is something that everyone had, but few do well. Mindless listening is used to describe passive listening, while mindful listening is used to describe the opposite. There are different types of faulty listening behaviors, such as pseudolisteners, selective listeners, defensive listeners, ambushers, insulted listeners, insensitive listeners, and stage hogs.
             A pseudo-listener will always give the appearance of listening and giving you their full attention, but in reality, they never comprehend a single word you say.