Posts Tagged ‘brain function’
Storytelling and Listening Skills
The stories you tell engage the brains of your listeners. That’s a fact; consequently, the better you are at storytelling, the more likely it is that people will listen to you.
If we use colorful language and metaphors, we engage different parts of the brain. For example, “She held a bunch of lilacs that smelled like the sachet hidden beneath my grandmother’s pillow.” Or, “His presentation was like a bowl of pasta, a big blob with no beginning or end.”
Now, whenever we hear a story, we want to relate it to one of our existing experiences. That’s why metaphors work so well with us. Whilst we are busy searching for a similar experience in our brains, we activate a part called insula, which helps us relate to that same experience of pain, joy, disgust or else.
If someone tells us about how delicious certain foods were, our sensory cortex lights up, if it’s about motion, our motor cortex gets active:
“Metaphors like ‘The singer had a velvet voice’ and ‘He had leathery hands’ roused the sensory cortex. […] Then, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like ‘John grasped the object’ and ‘Pablo kicked the ball.’ The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body’s movements.”
What Listening to a Story Does to Our Brains by Leo Widrich, 12/29/12 on Buffer
And then there are our friends, mirror neurons. The brain of a person telling the story and the brain of the listener synchronize. Uri Hasson, from Princeton University, and someone whose work I really enjoy, says that the storyteller can plant ideas and feelings into the listener’s brain, by the use of words.
Think of yourself at work and what you respond to. In one case a scientist says, “My experiment is showing compound x to be effective for people with hiccups.” How different would your brain react if that scientist says, “I’ve spent five years on compound x and now I can safely say that twenty of thirty people in the control group are hiccup free.” In the latter example, various parts of the brain would be stimulated, increasing memory and sustained interest.
Two additional fascinating points that Widrich makes in his article:
- Simple stories, like single-tasking, make it easier for the brain to follow. “Reduce the number of adjectives or complicated nouns in a presentation or article and exchange them with more simple, yet heartfelt language.” The notion that a picture is worth a thousand words comes to mind when you’re trying to get the listener to focus on your main point. The picture reinforces clear, powerful, and authentic language.
- “Some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more. This means, that the frontal cortex – the area of your brain responsible to experience emotions, can’t be activated with these phrases.”
Storytelling is not only engaging and motivating to the listener, it brings out the creative side of the speaker.
Listening Skills and Emotional and General Intelligence
A new study by Aron K. Barbey out of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and published in Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, has made some interesting discoveries about emotional intelligence and general intelligence. In the article, “The study found significant overlap between general intelligence and emotional intelligence, both in terms of behavior and in the brain. Higher scores on general intelligence tests corresponded significantly with higher performance on measures of emotional intelligence, and many of the same brain regions were found to be important to both.”
The article, published online at R & D Magazine (http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/01/researchers-map-emotional-intelligence-brain), continues, “The new findings will help scientists and clinicians understand and respond to brain injuries in their patients, Barbey says, but the results also are of broader interest because they illustrate the interdependence of general and emotional intelligence in the healthy mind.”
Barbey also states, “Intelligence, to a large extent, does depend on basic cognitive abilities, like attention and perception and memory and language…But it also depends on interacting with other people. We’re fundamentally social beings and our understanding not only involves basic cognitive abilities but also involves productively applying those abilities to social situations so that we can navigate the social world and understand others.”
We find this discovery of how important it is for us to be able to connect to others a notable outcome; another essential reason to improve our listening acuity.
Follow the link above to the article to learn more, and then share your thoughts with us. We’d love to hear your insightful comments.
Educational and Entertaining Listening Skills Research
There’s always new research being done on listening. I only report to you what’s documented, even the outré ones. Following are three pieces that I found fascinating.
1. According to the research results reported on Science Daily, children who participate in music lessons for as few as 1 to 5 years show improved neural processing of sounds as they near adulthood. This may translate to enhanced listening and learning for a lifetime.
“Based on what we already know about the ways that music helps shape the brain the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning.” says Nina Kraus, the Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Communication Sciences at Northwestern.
2. This one requires a bit of a stretch to see how the research relates to listening—it’s really about voice, which is definitely an aspect of listening.
Sucking in helium from a balloon gives humans a squeaky, high-pitch-sounding voice, because the gas, which is less dense than air, pushes the resonance frequencies of the vocal tract upwards, but doesn’t change the sound at its source. An analysis of the gibbon’s squeaky songs suggested that the same is true for these apes. Like humans, the origin of the sound of a gibbon’s call, which occurs in the larynx, is separate from the vocal tools used to modify it, the research showed. [Listen to Gibbon Calls]
What’s more, the analysis demonstrated gibbons have expert control over the tuning of their vocal cords and tract when singing — an ability that is important to the subtleties of human speech and is mastered by soprano singers.
“This is the first evidence that gibbons always sing using soprano techniques, a difficult [vocalization] ability for humans which is only mastered by professional opera singers,” Nishimura said. “This gives us a new appreciation of the evolution of speech in gibbons while revealing that the physiological foundation in human speech is not so unique.”
The study was published this week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
3. Do you hate it when people complain? It turns out there’s a good reason: Listening to too much complaining is bad for your brain in multiple ways, according to Trevor Blake, a serial entrepreneur and author of Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life. In the book, he describes how neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session.
“The brain works more like a muscle than we thought,” Blake says. “So if you’re pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you’re more likely to behave that way as well.”
Even worse, being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity–including viewing such material on TV–actually peels away neurons in the brain’s hippocampus. “That’s the part of your brain you need for problem solving,” he says. “Basically, it turns your brain to mush.”
Share any research you come upon, straight and kooky.
How to Sustain Learning by Listening: Using Your Listening Skills
When we are exposed to any learning situation, it’s challenging to hold onto the new information and skills. One sure way to sustain the gains is to use every listening encounter as an opportunity to practice. Learning, like any other brain activity, is seeded when we consciously pay attention or truly listen.
Following are some tips about how to sustain what you learn:
Logic behind learning: Why’s help retain How’s—Listen to figure out the purpose of what you learned and how the learning will fit into what you already know or take you into an entirely new realm of knowledge. Memorizing isn’t listening; listening goes to deep understanding.
Practice pulls theory; theory pulls practice—Putting theory to work makes it real and the more you practice what you’ve learned the more it becomes an integral part of your repertoire.
Interest in topic—I often say that “boring” is in the ears of the listener. What may not be of high interest to you might be fascinating to someone else, so try to listen for aspects that stimulate your interest and connect to what you’ve recently learned.
Novelty—Listening for new information or knowledge keeps our brains supple. If you can leave an interaction by saying, “Wow, I never thought of that,” you’ve proven yourself to have an open mind, a key component of a master listener.
Multiple settings—Listening occurs everywhere. When you learn to listen better at work, you can also listen better at home or in a social setting. Listen to identify how your newly acquired learning relates to the settings in which you find yourself.
Community—Listening is a group activity. Groups are comprised of individuals who require you to listen differently and purposefully to each person. Allow the community to test your new learning as well as to build upon it.
Skill development—The more you practice listening, the more likely you will hear more and be able to apply what you learn. Use your learning as a platform to acquire more skills.
Continual exposure—When you learn something new, pay attention to where else that new learning might occur. Listen to people talking about the subject matter, especially if they’re more knowledgeable than you.
No multitasking—we humans are only capable of “serial attention.” When mental attentiveness is required, we are actually “singletaskers,” not multitaskers, and there is no changing the way our brains are fundamentally structured. Discipline your mind to focus, focus, focus on the learning.
I tend to think the word learning connotes the integration of knowledge into your overall schema. Listening brings in the knowledge and if you consciously practice the learning at every opportunity, you’ll sustain the growth.
The Listening Skills Version of the Invisible Gorilla Effect
The invisible gorilla decade-old experiment was designed to show that we’re not aware of as much as we might think. In the experiment volunteers watched a video of a group tossing a ball and were told to count the number of times the ball was tossed. About half the viewers failed to notice a gorilla (in a fake suit) walk through the group they were watching.
Science News (12/3/11, p 10) reported on an experiment that took the gorilla-suit concept and applied it to listening. Psychologist Polly Dalton of the University of London created a recording of two men talking as they prepared food and two women as they wrapped a gift. Volunteers wore headphones and listened to the recordings that simulated the four characters moving about the room as they talked. During the recording, and for 19 seconds, “gorilla man” repeated, “I’m a gorilla.”
A very high percentage of the volunteers who were told to follow the women’s conversation and a third of those who followed the men, didn’t hear gorilla man at all. Gorilla man’s voice passed closer to the men in the scene, which Dalton claims, accounts for some of the reasons the men might have detected the gorilla more often.
Dr. Dalton’s experiment provides us with more research about how unconscious we are about what is happening around us. No one would ever say the ball tossers nor the headphones users were unfocused, they were hyper-focused. Still they missed something crucial that was in their midst.
Think about the people who are killed crossing a road while texting. They get so embroiled in their activity that they fail to listen to their surroundings. Our job is to know when we need to block out extraneous information and sounds, and when we need to scan the environment to take it all in.
Be aware; there are “gorilla men” everywhere.
Is the Internet changing the brains of youngsters?
Following is an excerpt from The Brain: A User’s Guide, The Daily Telegraph by Nigel Farndale posted 11:30 AM BST 24 Apr 2012. He interviews David Eagleman the brilliant neuroscientist I’ve written about before. Here’s Eagleman’s response to Farndale’s question:
Is the Internet changing the brains of youngsters?
“It certainly is,” he says, “especially in the way we seek information. When we were growing up it was all about ‘just in case’ information, the Battle of Hastings and so on. Now it is ‘just in time’ learning, where a kid looks something up online if he needs to know about it. This means kids today are becoming less good at memorising, but in other ways their method of learning is superior to ours because it targets neurotransmitters in the brain, ones that are related to curiosity, emotional salience and interactivity. So I think there might be some real advantages to where this is going. Kids are becoming faster at searching for information. When you or I read, our eyes scan down the page, but for a Generation-Y kid, their eyes will have a different set of movements, top, then side, then bottom and that is the layout of webpages.”
I recently had an experience with my eight-year-old granddaughter, Hannah that echoes Eagleman’s explanation. Hannah began reading early and prodigiously. She reads faster and more accurately than most adults, including me, so I’m curious about her reading process.
She came for a visit with her family during spring break, and I tried to watch her read to see if I could figure it out without being noticed. That part was easy because she’s not distractible when engrossed in a book. She was re-reading one of the Harry Potter’s as well as a different tome, with equally as many pages.
Just as Eagleman describes, Hannah’s eyes did not move across the page, line after line. Instead she seemed to look at the whole page then read in a “z” like pattern. What is interesting though is that she doesn’t spend much time at all on the Internet, even though she’s adept at using a computer.
I intend to continue observing her and her brother Izzy to see how the Internet is shaping their brains. One thing’s for sure; they’re not at all intimidated by technology.
Priming Our Listening Skills
At the Conference on World Affairs (an excellent meeting of the minds conducted annually at CU-Boulder), Drew Westen, a member of the panel, “The Human Brain, Not Perfect, but Good Enough,” explained the Heightened State of Latent Activation principle. Let’s look beyond the academic words to assess what the term means to us when we listen.
Dr. Westen performed the following experiment with the audience:
- He repeated four words: two of which were “ocean” and “moon.”
- Next he asked: “What laundry detergent comes to mind?”
- Those of us who thought of “Tide” raised our hands.
- Drew estimated about 80% of the audience, the typical percentage, raised our hands.
Dr. Westen explained that our results were predictable and replicable wherever Tide is sold, not because it is the most famous brand in the world, but because he primed us with the words “ocean” and “moon” without our being aware of his ploy. He primed us with words that relate to tides, which put our brains into search mode for familiar connections.
Our brains gravitate to prior experiences: e.g. we leap to conclusions when the words we hear are similar to ones we’ve heard before. That’s part of why we don’t listen fully; we gravitate to existing networks to select what we listen to.
More research on this subject was reported in the March 24, 2012 issue of Science News in an article by Laura Sanders, “Brain cells know how you will bet.” She says, “…nerve cells deep in the brain know what to do. And these cells know the plan seconds before the person actually decides on a course of action.” Thus, those neural networks are functioning well in advance of our conscious decision-making.
So what do these studies show us about listening?
- There’s a constant battle between our conscious attention and the brain’s control function—we don’t know 80% of what’s going on in our brain, so we better take advantage of the 20%
- Listening requires focus and intention for the information to be of any value
- We use intuitive theories about what we’ve heard and make up answers for what we don’t know—that can be dangerous if we don’t listen well to what is being presented to us
- Since our brains tend to be ahead of our conscious selves, staying present is our best chance for alignment between sender and receiver—or as someone else on the panel said, “Our unconscious processes can’t think and do at the same time.”
Listen with all the openness you have. When you come from a place of knowing, it messes you up to think about it and blocks most of what the sender has to offer.
Part 2 of Notes from the International Listening Association Convention
Dr. Doyle Srader, Northwest Christian University, Eugene, Oregon
Performance Listening
Question: How is the act of listening sufficient to fulfill the duties of the listener and/or create relationship?
Some findings:
- There are three categories of performance listening:
- Listening toward relationship—calls relationship into being and establishes ties
- Listening toward leadership—enters without an agenda and allows interaction to establish meaning and directions
- Listening toward fairness—hear someone out much like in the judicial system where there is a hearing
- Measure of success is when followers are satisfied that the interaction has been effective and appropriate
- Communication is transactional and a co-created encounter
- Goal—use all three to be a credible listener so other person would say s/he’s been heard
Christopher Gearhart, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
Sensory-processing Sensitivity
Question: Is the Highly Sensitive Person a Highly Sensitive Listener?
Some findings:
- No, highly sensitive people are easily distracted by stimuli and may not focus well as a listener
- fMRI shows more processing activity and less accuracy for a highly sensitive person
- fMRI shows longer and deeper processing activity for a less sensitive person
Sheila Bentley, Bentley Consulting; Graham Bodie, LSU; Jennifer Grau, Grau Interpersonal Communication
A Time I Felt Listened To
Question: Which techniques make a person felt listened to?
Some findings:
- People describe attributes first and behaviors second
- Sometimes the researcher had to ask, “What caused you to list that attribute to get the person to describe what the person did?
- Women square off more in an interaction while men take an open positioning
- 80% of all malpractice suits are caused by patient feeling “brushed off”
- An initial reaction determines degree of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the entire interaction, even if the first person encountered is not the main interaction (e.g. person at the front desk makes a good/bad impression, and that colors every subsequent interaction, regardless of how others treat the person)
- Back-channel responses, those that are unconscious such as nodding or uttering “uh-huh” signal understanding
- The key attributes included in a Physician Listening Study:
- It is assumed the physician brings these attributes to the table:
Confidence, Empathetic, Humane, Personal, Forthright, Respectful, Thorough
Most important verbal behaviors: Answers questions, elaborates on topics being discussed instead of answering with short statements, asks questions, does not interrupt or change the subject
Non-verbal behaviors: Maintains appropriate eye contact, focuses body language and position, engages in appropriate composure, smiles/laughs
Random notes:
- Good listening gives you currency
- There are four stages of counseling/therapy
- engagement
- assessment in context
- insight
- action
- Babies borrow their sound from parents—that’s why many children have similar voices and speech patterns as their parents
- Listening is enhanced when the listener asks: Who/what am I as a listener in this situation?
- Anticipation of where the speaker is going next derails communication
- Metaphor: Listening is a cup. If it’s full with our own stuff, there’s no room for another’s.
There was a lot of validation of our work in Listening Impact, especially for Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio ®
Active Listening might be a passé term: What would you nominate in its place?
Notes from the International Listening Association (ILA) Convention, March 22-24, 2012, Bremerton, WA
I’ve just returned from the ILA Convention in Bremerton, WA where I had the opportunity to learn about some fascinating research that expanded my knowledge of listening, and hopefully it will do the same for you. This post is part one of two of some of the take-aways from that conference.
It was quite an extended process to get to the convention—plane to Seattle, shuttle to the ferry terminal, hour ferry ride to Bremerton, and short walk to the convention center and hotel. Nevertheless, I’m very glad I attended because I heard some terrific presentations given by smart, smart people.
Graham Bodie and grad students from Louisiana State University
Supportive Listening
Question: What are the similarities and differences between a supportive person and a supportive listener?
Some findings:
- Supportive person is described in general, impressionistic terms such as: positive, intelligent
- Supportive listener described in specific, behavioral characteristics: involved in interaction, responds verbally
- Influencers on the relationship are
- non-verbal \immediacy (e.g. body language)
- verbal-immediacy (e.g. questions)
- Answer to question: How important is it to you that your relational partner is a good listener or good comforter, depends upon the importance you put upon it. Our level of satisfactions depends upon what we’re looking for in our relational partner to demonstrate.
Language Style Matching
Question: Does Language Style Matching (LSM) influence a relationship?
Some findings:
- Mimicry is automatic and mostly unconscious
- LSM is often used when people like one another
- LSM, use of emotional words, or cognitive (cause and effect) words didn’t make people feel better or worse. Or, nothing in particular made much of a difference
- But, negative emotional words and tentative words made people feel worse
- Major finding: We have expectations of listening behaviors, but they don’t matter much until they are NOT used. Then you’ll be considered a bad listener; however using them all won’t necessarily translate into your being considered a good listener.
Laura Janusik, Rockhurst Univeristy, Kansas City & Margarete Imhof, Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany
Listening Construct Across Cultures
Question: What similarities and difference do three cultures exhibit in terms of conceptualizing listening? (Japanese, European, US American)
Some findings:
- Culture is communication and communication is culture
- Subjective listening concepts determine how/why one listens
- How one perceives listening could affect how one does listening
- Subjective concepts are culturally dependent
Metacognition
Question: Will we listen better if we think about it?
Some findings:
- There are three stages to metacognitive listening:
- Before: plan and set goals
- During: comprehend, aware of what’s happening in the moment
- After: reflect
- Bringing listening to consciousness increases likelihood of a positive interaction
Directed Learning
Question: What are some strategies that will enhance listening in the classroom/training room?
Strategies:
- All about connections
a. What do I already know about topic
b. What should I know that I don’t
c. Learning facilitator stops every 10-15 minutes to tell them to make connections between a and b
2. Voice Mirroring
a. Facilitator reads a script while the audience mirrors her words out loud
b. Initially, the facilitator faces the audience, then turns her back
c. Facilitator faces audience again but this time the audience silently mirrors the words inside their heads, and finally they close their eyes and mirror in silence
d. Technique brings yourself back on track to focus entirely on what the speaker is saying
3. Stop, Look, Summarize
a. Draw a line at the bottom of your page of notes
b. Periodically, put the information into your own words
c. Technique translates and summaries ideas into an understandable format
4. Big Picture, Little Picture
a. Look at details and tie them to the big picture
b. Look at big picture and tie them to details
c. Technique relates two extremes of thought process to one another
5. Think, Pair, Share
a. Write words/terms you don’t understand
b. Pair up to figure out meaning
c. Share with others who may/may not have figured out definitions
d. Technique uses group knowledge and reduces anxiety about not knowing what a word/term means. It’s particularly good for non-native speakers as well as for people from different functions/disciplines
6. Multi-Tasking is a Myth*
a. Can’t do two tasks even when tasks tap into same part of brain
b. Can’t do two switch tasks using different parts of brain
*If you don’t subscribe to this blog and you’d like a copy of the short exercise that demonstrates this strategy, sign up for the blog and we’ll gladly send it.
My Broken Wrist and My Brain
The Glossy Black Cockatoos (c) Hugh Todd
We were on a bush walk in South Australia and came upon a sign that said the area is the habitat of the very rare (only about 260) glossy black cockatoo. If you saw that sign, what would you do? Right, haul out your binoculars, walk very quietly, and look around. We saw evidence of the seeds they feed on, so we were sure we’d spot the bird. No luck, so we continued on the hike, all the way down an embankment to the water, across river rocks to our destination, The Old Cannery.
It wasn’t much of a site, but the journey there was worth it. On our return trip, once again at the place the bird could be, I wondered what would happen if my partner became incapacitated. I certainly would not be able to get him out. Just then, as I was walking along, looking up for yet once more chance to see the magnificent bird, I tripped and fell hard onto roots and rocks.
My wrist and arm were sore, my hand was bleeding, and my pride severely damaged. Once we hiked out, I was able to drive the car, albeit uncomfortably. We changed our ferry reservation to earlier, and went home to ice, ibuprofen and a wrap. All that happened on a Friday.
We returned to Colorado the following Monday and I saw an orthopedist the next day. Yes, I had two small breaks and was fitted with a splint to immobilize my wrist.
Here’s the part where my brain comes in. On the trip I read a most fascinating book The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, MD. Most of the book is about brain plasticity, including how the brain creates new maps to deal with malfunctions and injuries. So, I decided to observe what was happening as my brain and body had to cope with my wrist.
First of all, I’m very left handed and the break is on that side. Beforehand I did very little with my right side, but it came to attention almost immediately. I drove to the ferry with my left hand on the gearshift (ouch) but my right arm, almost without my being aware, reached over to help. Since then, I observe myself becoming more and more ambidextrous: eating, brushing hair, closing car door, cooking, sorting laundry, typing (as fluid as ever with right and peck with left), and sleeping on my other side.
It might be wishful thinking, but I also notice my thoughts are more concrete and I’m more apt to remember details. I even found myself to a destination with logic rather than my GPS. Maybe Dr. Doidge’s writing is influencing me, or maybe what I’m experiencing is what he writes about. Whichever, I intend to keep using my right hand once the left is healed because I like having greater capacity.
Have you ever had a similar situation? What did you notice?