science

Reflective listening

Reflective listening is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Reflective listening rather than just read about it. In short: Reflective listening is a communication strategy in which a listener improves their understanding of a speaker's idea by offering that understanding back to the speaker in order to confirm that the idea has been understood correctly. It is a more specific strategy than general methods of active listening.

Key takeaways

Reflective listening belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Reflective listening to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Reflective listening from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Reflective listening is a communication strategy in which a listener improves their understanding of a speaker's idea by offering that understanding back to the speaker in order to confirm that the idea has been understood correctly. It is a more specific strategy than general methods of active listening.

Form of empathy Reflective listening arose from Carl Rogers's school of client-centered therapy in counseling theory. It is a practice of expressing genuine understanding in response to a speaker as opposed to word-for-word regurgitation. Reflective listening takes practice. Reflective listening is one of the skills of motivational interviewing, a style of communication that works collaboratively to encourage change. Failure to understand the needs of the person speaking can result in errors in work, such as problems being unresolved, or decisions not being quickly made.

Additional application Reflective listening has been found to be effective in a therapeutic setting. Subjects receiving reflective listening from a counsellor reported better therapeutic relationships and more disclosure of feelings. A qualitative study of students using song lyrics to practice their reflective listening skills suggested that, according to participants, this allowed for a deeper understanding of the emotional content of the practice experience.

Reflective listening in open-ended dialogue Skilled communicators frequently echo and restate their conversation partner's words, particularly when reacting to emotional narratives or when they are uncertain of the answer. Researchers Justin Dieter, Tian Wang, Arun Tejasvi Chaganty, Gabor Angeli, and Angel X. Chang have presented a new challenge and accompanying dataset designed to enable chatbots to replicate this behavior by echoing and rephrasing user inquiries to convey empathy or acknowledge ignorance. The authors examine the characteristics of effective rephrasing based on qualitative criteria and assess three different response generation models: a rule-based system that is sensitive to syntax, a neural model using a sequence-to-sequence LSTM with attention (S2SA), and an enhanced version of this neural model with a copy mechanism (S2SA+C). Human assessments indicate that both the S2SA+C and rule-based models produce responses that are similar in quality to those generated by humans. Furthermore, the deployment of S2SA+C in a live customer service environment suggests that this task of generating responses is a valuable addition to the capabilities of real-world conversational agents.

See also Clean language Focusing (psychotherapy) Motivational interviewing

References

Further reading Arnold, Kyle (2014). "Behind the Mirror: Reflective Listening and its Tain in the Work of Carl Rogers". The Humanistic Psychologist. 42 (4): 354–369. doi:10.1080/08873267.2014.913247. Baker, A. C.; Jensen, P. J.; Kolb, D. A. (1997). "In Conversation: Transforming Experience into Learning". Simulation & Gaming. 28 (1): 6–12. doi:10.1177/1046878197281002. S2CID 143770463. Fisher, Dalmar (1981). Communication in organizations. St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing Company. Gerwood, Joseph B. (1993). "Nondirective Counseling Interventions with Schizophrenics". Psychological Reports. 73 (3f): 1147–51. doi:10.2466/pr0.1993.73.3f.1147. PMID 8115566. S2CID 45988497. INIST 3863920. Katz, Neil H. and John W. Lawyer (1985). Communication and conflict resolution skills. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt. Kotzman, Anne (1984). Reflective listening. Kew, Victoria: Institute of Early Childhood Development. Rogers, Carl (1951). Client-Centered Therapy: its current practice, implications, and theory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Sahakian, William S. (1977). "William S. Sahakian. History and systems of psychology. New York: Wiley, 1975. Xviii + 494 pp. $19.50; paper, $8.95. (Paul T. Mountjoy)". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 13 (1): 78–81. doi:10.1002/1520-6696(197701)13:1<78::AID-JHBS2300130109>3.0.CO;2-9.

External links Reflective Listening — One-page summary used by National Health Care for the Homeless Council (currently under construction as of January 12, 2013)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Reflective listening

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Reflective listening claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Reflective listening before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Reflective listening ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Reflective listening

In research: Reflective listening appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Reflective listening in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Reflective listening is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Behavior modification, Counseling, Listening, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Reflective listening outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Reflective listening in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Reflective listening means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Reflective listening out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Reflective listening in simple terms?

Why does Reflective listening matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Reflective listening?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Reflective listening.