What do you mean by attentive and selective listening?

Your ears are constantly picking up sounds around you even when you aren’t actively listening. Selective listening is when you focus your attention on some specific information. It involves consciously or unconsciously choosing to listen to what is relevant to you and ignore what isn’t. It is a skill that anyone can develop and improve.

For example, when you visit a foreign country, you can find yourself surrounded by people who speak a language you don’t understand. Your selective listening will then kick in. You’ll instinctively tune out a lot of the noises around you because you can’t understand them. They are irrelevant to you.

As you spend more time in this new environment, you’ll learn a few foreign words. Your ears will perk up when you hear recognizable words pop out of otherwise blurry conversations around you. This new language will also sound more familiar to you if you study it or spend enough time listening to it. Then, you’ll need less effort to understand it.‌

As you understand it more, the once foreign language will become relevant to you. Your selective listening will reflect this new knowledge. Instead of background noise, you’ll hear familiar words and sentences.

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Levels of Listening

Levels of Listening explores how important listening isfor effective communication.

As Covey emphasizes in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, most of our efforts to develop communication skills deals with reading, writing and speaking. But very little effort is placed on developing our ability to really hear the other person's perspective.

This information can help you recognize and remove road blocks to listening.

What Is Selective Listening?

Selective listeningis a type of listening that allows you to hear what you want to hear. It encourages mental filtering and helps tune out the information we don’t want to entertain. In reality, it isn’t possible to hear everything every time. However, not paying attention to important details may lead to miscommunication.

Let’s look at some of the features ofselective listeningand see how they can become barriers to effective communication.

• You listen to more than one conversation or sound at a time—not giving your full attention to someone or something

• You’re preoccupied with various thoughts and have a difficult time focusing on what’s being communicated

• You’re likely to interrupt the speaker without fully understanding their problems or concerns

General Listening Types:

The two main types of listening - the foundations of all listening sub-types are:

• Discriminative Listening
• Comprehensive Listening

Discriminative Listening

Discriminative listening is first developed at a very early age – perhaps even before birth, in the womb. This is the most basic form of listening and does not involve the understanding of the meaning of words or phrases but merely the different sounds that are produced. In early childhood, for example, a distinction is made between the sounds of the voices of the parents – the voice of the father sounds different to that of the mother.

Discriminative listening develops through childhood and into adulthood. As we grow older and develop and gain more life experience, our ability to distinguish between different sounds is improved. Not only can we recognise different voices, but we also develop the ability to recognise subtle differences in the way that sounds are made – this is fundamental to ultimately understanding what these sounds mean. Differences include many subtleties, recognising foreign languages, distinguishing between regional accents and clues to the emotions and feelings of the speaker.

Being able to distinguish the subtleties of sound made by somebody who is happy or sad, angry or stressed, for example, ultimately adds value to what is actually being said and, of course, does aid comprehension. When discriminative listening skills are combined with visual stimuli, the resulting ability to ‘listen’ to body-language enables us to begin to understand the speaker more fully – for example recognising somebody is sad despite what they are saying or how they are saying it.

Example

Imagine yourself surrounded by people who are speaking a language that you cannot understand. Perhaps passing through an airport in another country. You can probably distinguish between different voices, male and female, young and old and also gain some understanding about what is going on around you based on the tone of voice, mannerisms and body language of the other people. You are not understanding what is being said but using discriminative listening to gain some level of comprehension of your surroundings.

Comprehensive Listening

Comprehensive listening involves understanding the message or messages that are being communicated. Like discriminative listening, comprehensive listening is fundamental to all listening sub-types.

In order to be able use comprehensive listening and therefore gain understanding the listener first needs appropriate vocabulary and language skills. Using overly complicated language or technical jargon, therefore, can be a barrier to comprehensive listening. Comprehensive listening is further complicated by the fact that two different people listening to the same thing may understand the message in two different ways. This problem can be multiplied in a group setting, like a classroom or business meeting where numerous different meanings can be derived from what has been said.

Comprehensive listening is complimented by sub-messages from non-verbal communication, such as the tone of voice, gestures and other body language. These non-verbal signals can greatly aid communication and comprehension but can also confuse and potentially lead to misunderstanding. In many listening situations it is vital to seek clarification and use skills such as reflection aid comprehension.

Stages of Listening

As you read earlier, there are many factors that can interfere with listening, so you need to be able to manage a number of mental tasks at the same time in order to be a successful listener. Author Joseph DeVito has divided the listening process into five stages: receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding (2000).