Grammatical encoding is the process of taking in a preverbal message (the “mental concept” as it exists prior to describing it with words) and producing surface structures as output based on the activation and usage of singular and syntactic words and their “rules” as are held in the mental lexicon (the mental vocabulary).
Each and every word that we use has syntactic rules attached to it that determine how it interacts with other words. The rule are interactive in themselves, meaning that they can change depending on what rules they are presently attached to as a result of being placed in junction with another word. The words have a left to right ordering and are incrementally generated from the preverbal message. These syntactic words are called “lemmas” for short.
The surface structure that I mentioned just shortly ago is largely lexically driven. This means that in an interactive way, as the words are selected, they need to be attached to the other words in a way that meshes with all of the other grammatical rules that are attached to each of the lemmas combined in the sentence. So the rules for A need to match the rules for B and the rules for B need to match the rules for C and so on…
To make this more difficult, the mental lexicon contains plenty of multiple-word lemmas. Phrases such as put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is or where-the-rubber-meets-the-road are multiple word lemmas that have a single meaning and as such have syntactical rules that apply to the phrase rather than each word.
So how are lemmas selected? I am glad you asked this… The “Production Lexicon” is the model that represents the process of creating the surface structure necessary for us to speak the generated phrases. It consists of three separate levels, the conceptual stratum, the lemma stratum and the form stratum.
At the conceptual level, a word or phrase is represented along with other closely related word and all of their grammatical rules. The lemma statum is where the actual word is chosen based on the best option. The For stratum is where the actual sequential layout of the phrase is developed and again this layout is based on the interactive rules that are occurring based on the sequential lemma selection.
The actual decision that is made about which word and structure to use is based on “roots” and “feet”. This is an extremely rudimentary explanation, but sufficient for our purposes here. The root is the cental concept/word/structure applying to a word or phrase. The feet are the outlying rules/meanings that are attached to a word or phrase. For instance, the word “school” literally means a building where teaching occurs, it is a noun, for the sentence to make sense a noun needs a verb, etc… (this is the root). “School” can also be a verb as in “to school someone”, this has it’s own set of rules (this is a foot).
So lets say your central concept (conceptual stratum) is “school”. At the conceptual level, school is chosen rather than fire department, concert hall, store, etc… The root of school is now the anchor from which the word selection will start.
Depending on what is to be conveyed about “school”, the feet of “school” will determine which lemmas will be chosen at the lemma stratum. In this case it is some place to go, so it will be a noun(a foot) rather than an action/verb such as “schooling”(another foot). The first lemma that is chosen is then going to supply the root for the form stratum.
At the form stratum, the actual word “SCHOOL” versus the other possibilities of schooling, schooled, etc…(all feet) is chosen based on the root from the lemma stratum selection.
This, my friends is how grammatical encoding occurs within the speakers mind. In my next post we will talk about the actual morpho-phonological encoding of speech. Until next time…
David J. Parnell | The Communication Expert
When two people are communicating with each other, it is very safe to say that there is a joint action taking place. What this means is that the two or more parties are aware of some goal of the joint activity and of some form of common ground. Now what that common ground may be is anything from trying to sleep with each other to trying to move outside to a parking lot to fist fight. Never the less it is important to realize that communication is a two-sided transaction based on mutually shared information.
Now you may be saying “well, duh… tell me something I didn’t know”, which I can understand. But there are a large number of people out there who see communication as a one-sided interaction and it is not. The information that is being produced and explicated at any moment IS BASED on this joint action. It is dynamic and fluid and alive…
The MAJOR reason that communication is so interactive and the content is so dependant on the flow of information is due the unique function that we as humans possess known as Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute or attach mental states to someone based on the information we are receiving at any given moment. Beliefs, values, fear, happiness, anger, etc… When you register that someone has any mental state at present, your ToM is in action. To reference my earlier post, this is the evolutionary response to our mind’s drive to develop predictive qualities to certain communication.
That being said, in a conversation the first occurrence mentally is an individual’s conceptual preparation in context. What this means is that before there can be any actual speech, there needs to be the development of speech-concepts, or options per se for the individual to choose from. This function of conceptual preparation has two stages, Macroplanning and Microplanning. So let’s begin with Macroplanning.
MACROPLANNING
Macroplanning really is the overall structural progression of the conversation. While talking about something, the speaker is focusing on a specific item, concept, etc… This is called discourse focus. Now, in moving to the next specific item/concept, the speakers ToM is at work as they are drawing the listener’s attention in this specific direction to achieve their goal. ToM guides this overall structure of flow of the conversation because based on the speakers beliefs/heuristics(rules of thumb) the speaker “believes” that this is the next logical “move” toward bringing the listener to their intended destination/understanding.
That is a mouthful… But to summarize, this is the concept of moving from point A (current focus) to point E, rather than point B or C or D BECAUSE the speaker believes that point E will get the listener to point Z more quickly and effectively than any of the rest. In essence, what to say and in what order…
The process of focus shifting is attention management at two separate levels:
1. The speaker is monitoring the listener for the appropriate signs of recognition that the listener understands the speaker ACCURATELY.
2. The speaker is monitoring whether the listener is FOLLOWING their speech act.
The structure that we follow consists of two parts, a focus tree and a stack. The focus tree is the actual flow, or road-system per se that we will follow during the discourse. For example, moving from A to G to D to M to Z. The stack is a conceptual holding block where we may place certain concepts that we will need to come back to for verification. For example, position G may be interactive with D, M and Z so G will be placed in the stack for future reference. There are a number of different principles that govern the development of focus trees and the usage of stacks. The specifics of which are far too acute to be helpful for our understanding here.
MICROPLANNING
Once the overall structure and content of the speaker’s communication has been determined, the next step is in producing a lexical representation of the concept they have in mind. What this means is that they need to draw on their vocabulary and the grammatical rules to develop a sentence that can convey their concept. There are 4 kinds of information placed into the communication:
1. The referents or objects/people/events will be specified and linked to the current focus.
2. A prediction about these referents is made such as cause/effect, if/then, actions, etc…
3. Specifications or modifications may be made such as descriptors, quantifiers, etc…
4. Grammatical encoding takes place which is the application of grammatical heuristics to the current discourse.
Grammatical encoding is a Pandora’s Box of information and we will deal with that in my next post. For now it is sufficient to understand the two overall planning procedures that occur when a speaker is first deciding what to say and how to say it. Till we meet again…
David J. Parnell | The Communication Expert
What is speech? What’s the big deal about being able to talk? Very rarely do we stop to think about how amazing the ability to speak to someone really is. Could you imagine a world where there were no language, no writing and no other form of communication outside of grunts and yelling and cooing at each other? Life as we know it would not exist… Our world would literally be exactly like that of our primate neighbors.
There are some significant differences between “us” and “them” and we as a species have developed into the amazing creatures we are today largely due to two major evolutionary breakthroughs.
1. The development of our species specific articulatory system that functions under specific, conscious control. Primate call systems are largely controlled by caudal midbrain structures (these are for the most part subconscious, stimulus/response parts of the brain and not directly under our conscious control). Therefore these call systems are directly expressive of emotions such as fear, aggression, alarm, contact seeking, etc…
The only neocortical (most recently evolved part of the brain) input is from the limbic system (anterior cingulated gyrus – which is still a part of our automatic/subconscious system). This makes the calling marginally condtionable and can therefore be louder, go on for a longer period of time, etc… However speech is fully under neocortical control. Our Larynx, pharynx, tongue and lip movements are controlled by our left and right primary motor cortex (new brain) and this is an evolutionary novelty.
The development of our new brain and the articulatory system not only allows us to continue to express emotion, but also convey specific information, sing, feign emotion, etc… These are highly evolved processes.
2. The second breakthrough is the development of social competence. The size of the neocortex in man is massive compared to our primate ancestors. One surprisingly reliable predictor of the size of the neocortex volume in a species is their group size. There are large parts of our neocortex dedicated to person-recognition (face and voice) and the recognition of intention (facial expression) and to the processing of speech and language. The function of this is mainly to discern potential intention on the part of the person we are interacting with.
Now even chimps can predict intention in other chimps based on body language and facial displays… just like we can. But in order to make these intentions PREDICTABLE (which is the most important part), we created beliefs, values, wishes, hopes, etc so that we can “know” what the next step is when assessing a display.
Predictability is one of the most sought after pieces of information by our subconscious when interacting with someone. The massive size and degree of development of our neocortex strongly supports the theory that its presence is to refine social functioning.
One of the highest orders of social functioning is our ability to communicate and convey information through our speech. With such a complex system, where do you even begin to understand how we develop an utterance during a conversation? If you are going to be an effective communicator it is necessary for you to have some knowledge about where exactly the sentences are coming from when your mouth speaks them…
Not to worry though, I have taken on the burden of drudging through these massive, boring and dry books on neuroscience, neurolinguistics and neurocognition to bring you the functional and abridged version to the “Speaker Blueprint”. Till we meet again…
David J. Parnell
In my previous post we discussed the vertical activation and redistribution of images through the upper, middle and lower fields of vision. The other and more important component for the purpose of accurate “lie detection” is the horizontal activation. Rather than some long rehash, let’s just get right into it…
As you probably already know, we have a left and right hemisphere in our brain and each side has different attributes that allow each to perform different functions. Our Left Visual Field (LVF) is wired directly into the right visual cortex residing in the right hemisphere. Right Visual Field (RVF) is wired directly into the left visual cortex residing in the left hemisphere.
The (RVF) has small, non-overlapping fields, sees only in 2 dimensions, can allow parts of the image to move independently, it encodes color, can attain high resolution and is finely tuned. (RVF) can encode motion, but much less efficiently than (LVF). This field requires far more time to process.
The (LVF) produces vague and global images with large fields of vision. It has broad, overlapping fields that can see 3 dimensions. The image can only move as a whole, motion can efficiently be encoded in the (LVF) and it has low resolution, low detail and as such has far faster processing speed.
What is incredibly important for us to recognize is that it is much easier and quicker to create an image in the LVF due to the processing efficiency and speed.
Based on the attributes above, horizontal activation occurs and is optimal for two reasons:
- In order to see motion, we will need to move our eyes to the left, to move or transmit an image we need to turn our eyes to the right.
- Memory is being accessed in the upper left due to inertia, the least energy principle and operant conditioning toward a preference for speed.
Because of the significant difference (relatively) in processing speed between the LVF and RVF, initial image establishment almost exclusively occurs in the LVF. The only time the eyes will go up and to the right (the RVF) is when some sort of processing of the image is necessary for retrieval such as cleaving and recombining of information.
PET scans have proven that regional blood volume increases in the right prefrontal cortex during retrieval/replication of memory and to the left prefrontal cortex during encoding (incorporation of sensory information).
When questions are asked that require more detail whether that is definition, color or contrast, or transmitting, cleaving and recombining of information, through the process of degeneracy (the process by which one neural network represents the same information as another) the information to be honed in on will be originated in the LVF and then transmitted via “solition wave” to the RVF.
This process explains why right handed people originate images to the left and then move images to the right when performing most visual construct operations that requiring spatial cleaving and recombining. Images will stay in the left or be moved to the left when they require sequential, temporal cleaving and recombining of spatially coherent images.
Auditory, Auditory Digital and Kinesthetic Activation.
Whew… OK. To reiterate, our visual fields are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the informational stimuli we sustain on a daily basis. So as you can imagine, the processes that support that are quite a bit more complicated. Let’s discuss the rest…
From an auditory standpoint, we have the Left Auditory Field (LAF) and the Right Auditory Field (RAF).
- The LAF is responsible for phonetic, sequential and rhythmic processing.
- The RAF is responsible for processing language and changes in pitch and inflection.
Both of these processes happen in what is called Wernicke’s area in the brain. These are two regions just above both ears and movement of the head assists in regional blood flow to both areas. This is why people will look left when hearing the exact words that were said and to the right when they are hearing the tone of the voice and inflection.
With respect to our auditory digital activation, there is a part of the brain in the frontal cortex called the Broca’s area which controls articulatory (speech) motor movements. As someone looks down and to the left, gravity assisted blood flow increases in this area and as a result makes it easier to construct speech (remember the principles of inertia?). What this means is that we are accessing motor speech patterns and cleaving/recombining information to produce speech. Thus we have the kinesthetic/auditory digital cue.
From a kinesthetic stand point (solely), looking down and to the right assists the gravitational reorientation of blood volume to the somatosensory cortex. This is responsible for collecting all transmitted motor, tactile, vestibular and emotional information from inside the body and transmitting it back to other areas of the brain for processing.
OK… man this is quite a bit of information. Let me point on the main points though and kind of summarize what they mean…
- Due to the existence of bimodal and trimodal neurons that integrate senses, it is next to impossible to TOTALLY separate with CERTAIN clarity which sense is being accessed based on their vertical position. What can be determined is that:
- In the upward position, they are AT LEAST accessing visual.
- In the center position, they are AT LEAST accessing auditory.
- In the bottom position, they are AT LEAST accessing kinesthetic or Aid.
- It can indeed be said with certainty that remembered images originate in the LVF and image construction occurs in the RVF.
- There is indeed a fairly clean separation between the left and right horizontal fields.
So, can you track someone’s internal sensory accessing cues? At a very basic level, the answer is yes, it can be done. That being said, it is necessary to understand that there are a large number of intricacies involved in doing so. To do it with certainty would take a finely honed skill set and almost clinical conditions. As far as judging a liar by watching their construction cues, this is very difficult to say. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that when they are in the RVF, they are performing some processing on an image. Does this mean that the image is untruthful? That really is almost impossible to say. My contention is that as a lie detector, at best this can only be a compass, not an actual decision point in the process.
As always, please visit my website to learn more about excellence in communication.
David J. Parnell
Imagine you’re having a conversation with someone and they ask you to tell them about the movie “Hitchcock” that you saw last week with Will Smith. For you to even begin your thought sequence, your mind wants to recall the name “Hitchcock” on the cover of the DVD box from Blockbuster. In order to do this, your eyes move up and to the right…
What your eyes new position indicates is the initial activation, maintenance and transmission of the image of the DVD cover. Like any other time, when you are asked for information that requires the accessing of an image, your eyes go upward (to the left, middle or right).
This process is called the “initial replication” cue. Now once the image has been established, it can be, and usually will be moved to the prefrontal cortex (front of your head) so that from there it can be moved to virtually any other part of the visual field. But why the heck would your brain move the image around? We’re getting to that…
But first, let’s answer the question “why do we look upward?” For our brain to process imagery, it is equipped with a power part called the visual cortex. As you can see from the image below, both sight and remembered sight originate in the rear of the brain near the stem.
In remaining consistent with the principle of inertia, this initial activation always requires more energy to perform than simple maintenance of the image. In the brain, where do you suppose this energy comes from? If you guessed blood flow you are correct… Remember my article on glucose and mental energy?
Where ever the eyes go, the head and then eventually the body follows. So the eyes moving upward is mainly for the purpose of helping to tilt the head back and increase gravitational blood flow to the visual cortex. This increase in blood volume in that area temporarily increases the energy level to help create or recall the image.
Why we look to the left or right will be handled shortly, but first we need to establish why the brain would move images internally in the first place. There are two major reasons:
- In our brain we have what are known as bimodal and trimodal neurons and these are responsible for mixing our senses together to produce a stronger and more real representation of either a memory or the imagination. Bimodal can mix two senses (visual and auditory for example) and trimodal can mix three senses (visual, auditory and kinesthetic). This helps to make things “real”.
- We have “Pyramidal” cells that allow an image to be expanded and contracted and moved just about anywhere in the brain. These let you zoom in and zoom out…
So, once the image has been moved into the prefrontal cortex, via a “gliding solition wave”, the image can be moved to different areas of your brain for the purpose of overlapping it with different senses from the bimodal and trimodal neurons to zoom in or zoom out and/or produce vivid, real and life-like visuals. This is the stuff our thoughts are made of…
Understanding that the gross majority of our stimulus is visual, initial activation of most thought almost entirely occurs in the upward visual field. So let’s take a look at what happens when our eyes are in each field of vision (Upper, middle, lower).
- Upper visual field: Visual patterns will overlap with auditory patterns that start at and come from eye level and above. They also will overlap with kinesthetic information that originates in the upper head area. So things such as a head ache or a bump on the head can be tuned in when the eyes are in the upward position. This increases blood flow to the part of the brain where we will need it.
- Middle visual field: Once the eyes move here we can then enhance auditory information that was picked up from the ear level down to the lower chest area. This means that if we wanted to enhance any kinesthetic information that occurred in the lower head to lower chest area we would keep our eyes at the midline. Obviously anything auditory will happen in the midline area as our ears are right there and they are the origination of any auditory stimulus. This keeps the blood where it needs to be while inducing overlapping.
- Lower visual field: Middle of the chest down is where we would “tune in” auditory and kinesthetic information for that area. Naturally, almost our entire kinesthetic stimulus (internally or externally) comes from the shoulders down as this is where out body is (motor, tactile and emotional sensation). So in looking downward we will increase gravitational blood flow to the appropriate areas in the front of the brain and induce overlapping.
So what does this mean? That if you are remembering what the dog looks like that was barking at you last week and why you ran away… although you may originate the image in the upper hemisphere to spark the appropriate energy levels, the image will be moved into the lower quadrant to enhance it with the auditory coming from below your chest and the spike of kinesthetic “fear” that happened in your chest.
So today we dealt with all three visual vertical positions, tomorrow we will deal with the left and right visual fields and the lower fields of Kinesthetic and Auditory Digital. Once we understand all of these we can speak more intelligently about the efficacy of reading them…
To learn more about communication, visit my website The Communication Expert.
David J. Parnell
The term Eye Accessing Cues refers to the positioning of the eye balls in certain areas when “accessing” information internally. They are based on certain criteria that generally revolve around the VAK predicate system with the addition of a category for raw information. It has been a strong buzz term for years at this point and carries with it quite a bit of controversy along with it.
There are six access points and they include:
1. Visual Construct (Vc) Upper Left
2. Visual Remembered (Vr) Upper Right
3. Auditory Construct (Ac) Left
4. Auditory Remembered (Ar) Right
5. Kinesthetic (K) Lower Left
6. Auditory Digital (Aid) Lower Right
The picture above represents a right handed person and illustrates the layout of the cues.
The first four are fairly self explanatory. The fifth, “kinesthetic” refers to emotions, tactile feelings and motor function (movement). The sixth, “auditory digital” refers to actual internal dialogue, meaning the information that is conveyed through your speech.
If proven effective, this process has two extremely “attractive” qualities:
1. Strategy Elicitation. What is a strategy? Well regardless of what someone is doing, whether it is speech or movement/action or thinking or feeling, they mentally perform what can be termed a “strategy” which creates the “decision” to perform that speech, movement, etc… I am placing the term “decision” in quotations because the overwhelming majority of these are made non-consciously and as such, just “happen” as a response.
A strategy is a particular sequence of mental actions that take place to create the decision. A person’s strategy will be made up from the senses (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic and Auditory Digital) and they are the same for any particular action, each time it occurs. For instance, when a person moves themselves into a panic attack, they will follow the same internal strategy, which is prompted by a specific stimulus, every time to achieve their panic attack.
When someone has a problem such as anxiety, depression or panic attacks, a therapists ability to determine this strategy is a great starting place for therapy. The challenge though is that much of the strategy can happen out of conscious recognition and the ability to calibrate the eye accessing cues can help in determining this internal strategy.
2. Lie Detection… If you ask someone what they were doing last night and they are “Visually Constructing” rather than “Visually Remembering”, then they are thought to be creating an answer rather than presenting the remembered answer (which is the truth).
For the general public, especially regarding the latter, you can see the strong temptation that the believability of eye accessing cues carry. It would be a pretty good consolation prize in lieu of being able to actually mind read.
There has been quite a bit of controversy over the credibility of eye accessing cue efficacy and although there is much material that surrounds the usage of it, there is very little regarding empirical studies based on it. In fact, to the best of my knowledge the only empirical study available has been conducted by the persuasion authority Kevin Hogan (http://www.kevinhogan.com/NLPeyeaccess.htm ).
Over the next two posts we will discuss the neurology behind how and why our eyes move to certain places when we access information. We can then more intelligently decide on the efficacy and usage in helping establish excellence in communication.
As always, please visit my website The Communication Expert to learn more.
David J. Parnell
Today we are going to finish our 4 part professional listening series by talking about quality listening habits that you can begin developing right away and we will look at skill preparation and development at the Macro and Micro levels.
First let’s talk about developing quality listening habits. There is simply no silver bullet for doing this. Countless studies have shown that NOT using old habits atrophies the neural net that produces the habit and REPETITION develops new neural nets that create new habits. So the first step is to bring cognition back into the picture. We have already talked about potential bad habits so to complement that I have provided a fairly comprehensive list of quality habits that you need to begin developing while you are listening to your communication partner.
- Establish your motives upfront – As you find yourself beginning a new communication, bring into your consciousness the reason/s WHY you are doing this in the first place. Take yourself out of the stimulus/response mode briefly to place a bit of overlying framework on your motives. This will serve you well with respect to filtering out time wasting conversation and when you do engage in a meaningful communication it will serve as a compass to keep you on track and mindful.
- Be present – When you have determined that this is a meaningful/useful discourse, stay in the ball game for the entirety. The mind is set up to handle many things at once and often does so. The downside to this is ineffectiveness if the multitasking process is not controlled. Work to keep your attention on the matter at hand. If you have pressing needs it may make sense to jot them down quickly so that your mind is not trying to “remind” you to deal with them.
- Process communication as a whole – Be forever cognizant of the fact that your subconscious will be evaluating the speaker on several different levels (the way they look, their dress, their tone, their hair style, etc…) IN ADDITION to evaluating the content and quality of the information they are conveying. Pay attention to all of this as a whole and use any internal signals as a prompt to dig further and explore RATHER than as a definitive judgment.
- Be prepared for any potential emotion spiking – Emotional spiking is the result of the introduction of an emotion that is relationally dissimilar to your present state due to the conveyance of emotionally stimulating content or verbiage. This is unique to each person and can really be represented by everything under the sun. Cursing, certain value thresholds, particular subject matter such as sex or violence, etc… The key is to know your own hot buttons and MENTALLY PREPARE yourself with respect to how you will handle them if they arise. The spike in emotion is your body preparing you for protection because it is thinks it is in danger and the result, as of that moment, is unpredictable. So it fires up the engines to get ready for the worst. By mentally rehearsing how you will handle any of these situations, you can and do INSERT predictability into that scenario and your subconscious will go easier on the hormone release and cooler heads will indeed prevail.
- Don’t interrupt – Just like it says… don’t interrupt. If you have something you want to say then hold onto it until they are done. 9 times out of 10 it is wholly sufficient to repeat a word in your phonological loop WHILE listening to the speaker and processing their communication. If your concept is too complicated or more abstract than what a single word can encapsulate, then set an anchor for yourself. Squeeze your pinky finger and thumb together as a reminder or place your pointer finger on your elbow. Use your imagination… whatever works for you.
- Never mind read – When someone is communicating with you, what you are receiving from them is the culmination of all of their experiences, values, beliefs, visualizations, information acquisition, etc… Every single human is such a dynamic and unique package. The possibility that you will know EXACTLY what they are thinking at any given time is improbable at best. You may be able to hit it somewhere in the park, but you will not hit it on the head. So let them express themselves, give them time and plenty of room to roam around their mental lexicon to find the right words for them. Otherwise you will be coloring their communication with your own experience and this dilutes your own informational acquisition.
- Only OFFER your help – In dire situations where they seem to be stuck, then OFFER to help them and wait for their answer. If they want help, then help… If they don’t, be patient.
- Pay close attention to abstraction level – In my experience this is the number one culprit of miscommunication. Time and again I will see communication breakdowns occur as two people argue about a concept that they are actually agreeing on. Take the example of the security sales person we discussed earlier. Both parties agree that they house and family needs to be secure, they are simply looking at it from different “heights”… One is at a 50,000 foot view and the other is at a 200 foot view, what is important is that they are both taking in the same view… So pay close attention to the height of your communication partner’s view while you are talking.
- Tend to missing information – Be cognizant that your mind will want to simply fill in any gaps with its own version of the story. You should know by now that your minds version is NOT the same as their minds version. So when you come across areas of missing information or ambiguity, seek out their version… clarify what they mean.
- Replace “yes, but” with “yes, and” – Just like it says… by using “yes, and…” you will be validating that you have processed their information AND segueing into your own without damaging the open-platform you are trying to create for them to communicate on.
- Seek effectiveness rather than validation – You are here on this earth because your bloodline and genetics are competitive. Survival was not easy and it took good solid genes to come this far. As a result, you can expect yourself to be competitive in one way shape or form while you are communicating. Be cognizant of this and use it as energy and drive, not a governing and dictatorial instrument. Realize that it is OK to be wrong, we all are at one time or another. By seeking to learn and grow rather than win a pyrrhic victory at all cost you will exponentially improve your communication effectiveness and the quality of your life.
- Constantly seek rapport – Rapport is the literal road on which your partner will be driving their communication-mobile. If that road is treacherous, bumpy, winding with sharp corners and slippery they will be driving very cautiously. But if you can give them a straight, dry, wide and safe road on which to drive you will get to see everything that their car can do. Without good rapport you will only receive inhibited information with a ton of gaps so constantly seek to establish and keep rapport.
- Thinking, Feeling, Behaving – Communication will consist of verbiage and content that will represent one or more of these three categories. Keep a close eye out for which category they are talking in. This will allow you to keep aligned during the conversation and also see areas of missing information.
- Judgment – Be prepared for instantaneous categorization, stereotyping and judgments to be made about the person BEFORE they even open their mouths. It is important to realize that this is a legacy from our reptilian brain and although it may have been phenomenal for our ancestors it can indeed get us into trouble in the present. Much like the habit of processing the communication as a whole, do not let the subconscious categorizations taint the validity or credibility of the information being conveyed. Use those categorizations as barometers, not definitive judgments.
- Keep a clear channel – Breathe, focus and take breaks if necessary. Realize that your mind is going to be working very diligently and frantically during a prolonged discourse. Keeping a clear head can become increasingly difficult as time wears on. By understanding that this will occur and that it can have a negative effect on how you process the information you are receiving you will help yourself immensely in being more effective.
By bringing conscious awareness to the usage, or lack thereof you can begin to incorporate these into your daily discourse. The more you catch yourself NOT using them, the more you WILL use them… The more you use them, the more effective you will become and the more innate their activation will become.
- Strategy and usage at the Macro-level: When you have the luxury of being able to prepare for a communication effort ahead of time, it makes sense to employ some mental preparation. By doing so, you will effectively call into your working memory the fields and categories of information that will be important to you during a particular discourse.
1. Determine what type of communication this will likely be. Will it be a persuasion effort, a simple conveyance, a negotiation or argument, socialization or a planning or progression effort? Now it may turn into any or all of them all at once. But most times what you are expecting is what you will get. So make your best guess as to what type of interaction you think it will be.
2. Once you determine this, recall the categories of information you will be looking to acquire. In many cases I find it prudent to take a few minutes to brainstorm and jot down examples of each category in order to activate those particular thought processes. By doing so you will prime your working memory with the proper informational needs and ensure that you will have to appropriate antennae up while communicating.
- Strategy at the Micro-level: Developing an actual skill set with the above information is the ONLY way that you will be able to use this at the micro-level. Within any communication, there will be micro-structures of all of the above categories. In a negotiation at any point in time you may be simply conveying something, persuading, arguing or even socializing. The speed and pace with which this will happen requires this to be an innate skill set. As a result, only practice will make perfect.
My initial practice consisted of watching YouTube videos of interactions between people. This allowed me to evaluate what type of discourse was occurring and then make my decision on what information I would look for. You also have the luxury of timelessness where you can pause the video and think about it if you need. This is an amazingly efficient and effective way to develop your skill set.
Once you feel comfortable with this you can then begin to pay attention to your own conversations and make the proper mental adjustments when necessary. You will start out slowly at first and the skill will be sporadically applied. But with time and practice you will quickly be applying your listening skill set innately and at the micro-level.
You can now consider yourself a professional listener… To learn more about other forms of effective communication please visit my main site The Communication Expert or feel free to search my other blog posts.
David J. Parnell | The Communication Expert
In revisiting part 1 of our series, effective listening is really about gathering information and the trick is in focusing your attention in a way to acquire the appropriate information. So what is the appropriate information? To help focus your mind let’s define “appropriate information” as whatever information will help advance your own interests in the communication. To think this way, you will need to first define what your interests are in a particular communication and second determine what types of information can help you to advance in it. If you don’t do this your primitive, subconscious mind will indeed do it for you.
There are 5 functional categories in any communication that will govern your own personal interests for engaging the other person or persons. They are Rapport, Persuasion, Conveyance, Negotiation/Argument, Socialization and Planning/Progression. There 2 separate but interactive categories that are necessary to facilitate the execution of the 5 main categories. Sensory Acuity is necessary as a barometric indicator on how or whether to move forward in the communication. Rapport is necessary as it provides the comfort and inhibition resulting in complete information disclosure. Let’s define them:
1. Persuasion – In persuasion you are attempting to change a person’s thought processes for the purpose of achieving a desired end result or action. Persuasion, although there are an infinite number of methods that can accomplish this and it can be interactive, the end result is generally a unidirectional communication. In other words your mindset doesn’t change while theirs does.
2. Conveyance – This is the simple extension of information from one party to the other. This again is a unidirectional communication and is relatively nonreciprocal aside from simple verification. In other words, “you take your second right after the light and the house is the third down on the left… do you understand?”
3. Negotiation/argument – This is a bidirectional communication that matches two unidirectional communication styles (both sides trying to persuade each other) and results on both parties moving their original conceptually held position of truth to a new compromised position of truth. Basically, both parties change the way they think because of the information they received from the other party and they meet in the middle.
4. Socialization – This is a bidirectional form of communication and is used for the purpose of establishing hierarchies and networks. The root of this is in creating protection and gaining access to the goods and services of other people. This is simply making and establishing friendships or reciprocal relationships.
5. Planning/Progression – This is the unidirectional process of simple information elicitation. When this occurs it is for the purpose of planning WHETHER to move or progress in a certain direction (this could be socially, professionally, geographically, etc…) and if so, then HOW to do so. In other words, “Do you want to go to Outback or McDonald’s? Which one do you think is closer? Should we drive the Porsche or the Ferrari to get there?”
6. Sensory Acuity – This is the processing of both verbal and nonverbal signals for congruity so as to determine both WHETHER to move forward in the communication and if so, then HOW. This is a unidirectional communication and consists of simply accepting and processing outside information. As an example if person A is trying to Romance person B and person B is fidgeting, continues to fiddle with their pen and keeps returning to the subject of their nausea… Person A’s sensory acuity should be telling them to switch subjects.
7. Rapport – This is the matching and mirroring of both verbal and nonverbal communication content and style for the purpose of creating comfort during a discourse. Again, this is a unidirectional form of communication and only consists of signals being sent. Sensory Acuity is the other side and consists of the processing of the signals being received. As an example, when person A is sitting and facing person B while they are talking about football, person A should be attempting to match their posture, leg and arm position, breathing rate, etc… while pacing the content of the conversation (football) prior to leading.
This is a solid frame work in which to place and categorize each of our communication attempts. What we need to determine now is which unique informational components can help in facilitating the advancement of each categorical agenda. Obviously any and all information that you receive can potentially help to advance your position. That being said, fundamentally there are varying classes of information and information-strategies that can be acquired through listening that are almost conclusively necessary for communication to be effective.
Communication is a dynamic, changing, fluid process and the above groupings do interact with each other and as such are not necessarily exclusive. Attempting to place rigid parameters around each category that are too strict will result in failure. That being said, there are generally accepted and occurring fundamental informational attributes that can be used in order to greatly increase the probability of your effectiveness while functioning within each one.
Now obviously raw informational content is assumed within each category. Without this the communication basically wouldn’t exist. With that out of the way, let’s highlight the types of information that are most important to pay attention to in each category one at a time.
- Persuasion - Values/Beliefs, Meta-programs, Cognitive biases and Fallacy usage (For exploitation).
- Conveyance – Language of Specificity, Adjectives/Adverbs and TFB (Thinking, Feeling and Behaving).
- Negotiation/Argument – Language of Specificity, Abstraction Levels, Body Language Incongruity, Values/Beliefs, Meta-programs, Cognitive Biases and Fallacies (For exploitation).
- Socialization –Body language, TFB, Predicates, Content Congruity and Values/Beliefs.
- Planning/Progression – Language of Specificity, TFB, Cognitive Biases and Fallacies (To ensure quality information).
- Rapport – Body Language, Predicates, content, TFB and Content Congruity.
- Sensory Acuity - Body Language and Content Congruity.
Will all of these attributes be necessary every time? No. Can other informational attributes come into play? Yes. By understanding the fundamentals of each and using them while communicating you will indeed be as effective as you can ever hope to be.
As an analogy, take the concept of training to be a fire fighter. It is incredibly practical to train yourself in fundamentals such as how to properly assess a building, how to check a door before opening it, how to properly carry an injured person or how to quickly connect and use a water hose. It is impractical to train yourself exactly how to handle each type of housing floor plan, how to handle a fire where there are 2 victims instead of 5, How to handle a fire in a pet shop, etc…
There are simply too many possibilities. But if you train the fundamentals you will be as prepared as possible for any scenario you are posed with. With that in mind you can feel very confident that these classifications are not rigid, but flexible to a degree and will act as a strong compass for you to plot your course.
Part 4 of our series will discuss effective listening habits (both internal and external) and two effective preparation strategies for effective communication.
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This post was written by admin on December 28, 2008
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As we determined in the previous post, when we reduce “listening” down to its purest form, it is the process of gathering information. When a communicator begins to CONSCIOUSLY determine for what purpose the information is being gathered AND what information specifically is being gathered is where they truly become an effective listener.
Before going any further though, I want to acknowledge and address the difference between EXTERNAL and INTERNAL listening.
• Internal listening is the mental processes that someone uses while communicating to receive, process and internalize the information being conveyed by their communication partner.
• External listening is the physical displays of communication, both verbal and nonverbal, that are given in response to a communication.
In short, internal is simply “within” the communication recipient and external is simply “projected from” the communication recipient IN RESPONSE (this is important) to the originator’s message.
External listening really only serves one purpose, and that is to keep the communicator “comfortable” during the course of the communication so that they will continue to convey information to you without inhibition. The more uninhibited information that you are able to receive from someone the better off you will be. You always want the option to filter and delete information rather than fill in missing information. This will go a long way toward placing you in control of the communication.
The proper term for keeping your partner comfortable is “rapport”… We will not be delving into that here as we will have a complete series on rapport in the near future. When you hear terms such as empathic listening, compassionate listening, active listening, etc… These are all labels placed on the physical manifestation the rapport process being executed in a particular environment.
The types of questions to use have been covered in our professional series on question-strategy. The types of body language to use have been covered in our professional series on body-language. I will put all of this together into a process for you in a rapport series at a later date.
As such, we will be focusing solely on how to effectively control and use our internal processes to produce effective listening skills. In part 2 of our professional series on sensory acuity we covered 6 concepts/processes/phenomena that can have a very adverse affect on our ability to objectively process information. They are:
1. The Psychological Immune System. This is a mental “system” that helps us to evaluate information in particular ways so as to buffer the effect of trauma and other negative events.
2. Cognitive biases. These mental are deviations from what would be considered statistically correct or rational judgments.
3. Attentional processing. This is the automatically driven mental govern of what type of information our mind will sort for at any given time.
4. Limited brain capacity. Our brain, as powerful as it is, can only handle and process a limited amount of information at any given time.
5. Categorization. Our brain has necessarily evolved in a way that causes it to instantly “categorize” people, places and things without conscious evaluation.
6. Working memory. Working memory is a temporary store for recently activated items of information that are currently considered important to the task at hand.
The result of these 6 processes/systems can in many cases produce negative side effects. The Pareto principle applies very convincingly to the portion of the population who is adversely affected by these. Your first step in remedying this is to become aware of the most overt and egregious habits that result from these processes. These habits are a major hindrance to effective communication and being able to spot them and apply control will go a long way in any discourse. So let’s discuss them below:
1. Lack of Interest in the subject matter and/or focusing solely on their own agenda. This happens quite often and can detract greatly from your own effectiveness. The specific content of the subject matter IN the conversation may not be enthralling, but the hierarchically superior reason FOR having the conversation may be. It is important to realize AND keep in mind WHY you are having the communication in the first place. This should help to keep your mind focused. As an example, just because you don’t really care about how your wife picked out her hair color doesn’t mean that you don’t care about making your wife feel loved.
2. The processing of ONLY NONVERBAL (body language and appearance) and/or their communication delivery rather than the combination of the aforementioned AND the information being delivered. This is basically the complete lack of conscious processing of the communication. In many cases the way a person looks or how they are speaking can greatly impact the validity of the information they are communicating. Unfortunately, this quick classification is not always accurate and can hinder our own effectiveness. As an example, A man being dressed in dirty overalls and tattered boots may detract from the impact of his business advice… Even though he is currently dressed like this because he is working on the farm that the multi-million dollar Executive Search firm he founded paid for.
3. The processing of ONLY FACTS rather than the communication as a whole. The opposite of #2, this will generally happen with extremely emotional individuals and is a coping mechanism developed in response to the previous occurrences of significantly emotional experiences. As an example, if a man has been hurt a number of times in the past by ex-girlfriends he may only communicate at an auditory digital (purely informational) level and avoid processing anything else that may lend itself to emotional spiking.
4. Emotion spiking and/or lack of emotional intelligence. There is an abundance of FMRI’s and Pet scan studies that have conclusively determined that when emotions become aroused blood will flow FROM the parts of our brain that produce executive control and rational thinking TO areas of the brain that control stimulus/response and subconscious/automatic mental processes. As an example, while you are speaking with a beautiful specimen of a human being and they are creating wonderful visuals in your mind with their verbal content your ability to apply reason and critical thought is indeed decreasing.
5. Interruption during the course of another person’s communication. Due to very limited brain capacity and a propensity to be “right” rather than “effective”, many times people will interrupt during conversation so that they do not forget or lose their immediately occurring thought/concept. As an example, while the employee is describing to the manager why they were late to work, the manager interrupts to berate them BEFORE the employee is able to tell her that they saw the CEO in the diner on the corner and spent some time “talking the boss up”.
6. Mind Reading to finish a speaker’s thought before they do. Although our brains are amazingly powerful and fast, they will stall sometimes or struggle to find the right words. Our mental lexicon (storage area for language) is generally very efficient, sometimes finding just that right word or representation takes a bit of time. Our brains ability to think is considerably faster than its ability to speak and this can cause impatience on the part of the listener.
We also have a psychological propensity to mind read due to the existence of “mirror neurons” and a psychological drive to achieve predictability in another’s actions.
These two factors can drive people to finish their communication partner’s thoughts BEFORE they do by either simply filling in the gap or offering suggestions as to what they “might” want to say. Many times the mind reads are wrong and result in a hindrance to the effectiveness of the communication in two major ways:
a. When someone begins to offer up “suggestions” for the person, they can create a priming effect in the person’s working memory and direct the flow of information. This is obviously very much like interrupting but this is the projection of your own thoughts onto the other person’s communication rather than simply supplying your own view. As such this is driven by fundamentally different processes. Let’s revisit the person buying the car above… The sales person asks them what they like about the car. The buyer likes the new technology in the fuel system and while he is trying to come up with the right terms to describe it (he read it online the night before) the sales person begins to prompt him with specific safety components such as air bags or a 5 star crash rating. As a result, now the buyers mind is now redirected toward safety features rather than the ACTUAL reason they wanted it in the first place.
b. The conversation may unnecessarily take a turn in the wrong direction. As an example, let’s say you are talking with one of your friends and she is telling you about how she saw someone trip and fall yesterday… As she was starting to tell you what she did, you blurt out “and you really laughed your but off, didn’t you!” Unfortunately she was going to tell you how she help the woman up and now thinks you’re a complete jerk because you would laugh at a woman who fell.
7. Focusing on incorrect levels of abstraction. While person A is talking at a more global level, person B just continues to focus on a more acutely specific level and as such “misses the boat”. As an example let’s say a home owner wants to talk about security of their entire home and family (doorways, garage, basement, windows, computer, in-house safe, etc…), but the security sales person continues to ONLY talk about securing the doorways…
8. Internally filling in information gaps. Our brain is neurologically wired to fill in any blind spots or missing information during a communication in order to most efficiently make sense of it. This process alone is WHY language still works even though there are constant distortions, deletions and generalizations. As a result two potentially damaging things may occur:
a. Automatically generated information. Many times when we hear or see something we don’t necessarily understand we will simply “fill in” the missing information ourselves. When we do this, we place information from our own perspective and as such is most likely NOT the same as what they are intending.
b. Lack of clarification. We will also tend to allow misunderstood concepts pass by without clarification due to expediency factors and/or automatic filling from our subconscious.
As an example, while the potential car buyer is listening to the sales person tell them that “THEY say this car is the best” most people will just assume who “they” are. Meanwhile, “they” may only be the sales person’s team there at the dealership and as a result lose all credibility due to bias.
9. Yes, but…. This is simple a conjunctive segue into the thought/concept that you have been mentally rehearsing inside your working memory. The actual, literal conveyance from this is twofold:
a. “Yes” here is a faux-recognition phrase and only serves to let them know that you haven’t listened to a word they said, and
b. The “but” means that you “disagree” with their concept, whether you do or not.
This is due to any number of factors ranging from disinterest to the need to be right rather than effective to limited brain capacity. Whatever the reasoning the connotations it carries are massively destructive in a conversation and needs to be remedied.
As an example, let’s say your girlfriend goes to great lengths to explain why she was late coming to your dinner party. Her car broke down, she was harassed by the tow truck driver, etc… Your response to all of the hardship she just went through was “yes, but you should have called to let me know…” That “yes, but” was a real slap in the face…
10. The need to be “right” or show that you are “better” than the other person. Due to a number of factors associated with the psychological immune system and cognitive biases, as humans we have a perpetual drive to “validate” our existence and the choices we make. By doing so we in effect create the feeling of a more stable mental state. The problem that can arise from this is that people will generally argue to prove their own point or concept of what is correct REGARDLESS of whether it is or not. The end result is that a communication is not always effective as someone may “win” and “prove” their point even though it isn’t objectively correct. Take for instance the husband who is fighting with his wife about how to more effectively run her kitchen. Even though she knows it inside and out and is unquestionably more qualified to determine this, he won’t back down on how he thinks it “should” be done.
11. Creating distraction and/or sending poor body language cues. This lends itself to the category of external listening but is important to mention never the less. If you are not creating an environment that helps them to feel comfortable, important and interesting you will indeed hinder the effectiveness of the communication. Fidgeting, losing eye contact, slumped posture etc… All are examples of poor listening habits.
In our next post we will begin to discuss the categorical types of information that can be processed and what functions listening can serve during the course of communication.
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This post was written by admin on December 27, 2008
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If you are going to effectively communicate with someone it is imperative that you ensure that they are both hearing and understanding what it is that you are say. This is difficult to know for two reasons:
- We have developed incredibly powerful subconscious and automatic social mechanisms that help us to facilitate the flow of conversation. Head nods, “uh-huhs” and “mmm’s” are a few of the automatic and more often than not, meaningless recognition gestures that we use. These types of gestures are generally for the purpose of buying time and keeping rapport while communication is constructed mentally.
- Do to the buffering capacity of the phonological loop, even if someone is not mentally processing the content of what you are saying they can still repeat back the last sentence or two that you fed them. A subcomponent of the phonological loop, the subvocal rehearsal loop, repeats content as it is evaluated and this allows someone to regurgitate your last piece of communication regardless of their actual “attachment” to it.
This means that without some active participation on your part, you can’t know for certain that they are processing your information. One of the best ways to know is by using your own sensory acuity to monitor their responses to see if they are congruent with the information you are attempting to communicate.
Sensory acuity is the ability to observe minute changes in a person’s physiology, tonality and/or verbal content in response to your communication or other outside forces. Responding appropriately is an entirely different ball of wax. For the time being, let’s just stick with detecting the changes first.
VOICE
- Tempo – This is the rate at which someone is speaking to you. Is this speeding up, slowing down or staying the same? Speeding up will indicate excitement, anxiousness or anger. Slowing down is an indication of relaxation, comfort and development of rapport.
- Volume – This is how loudly someone is speaking. An increase in volume can and usually does indicate an increase in excitement, anxiousness or anger. A decrease in volume is usually an indication of relaxation, comfort and development of rapport.
- Pitch – This is the “height” with which someone is speaking. A higher pitch can mean a movement toward femininity and therefore toward a subordinate role in the conversation. A lower pitch is a drift toward masculinity and can indicate an attempt toward a dominant role in the conversation.
- Verbiage/content– What are they talking about? Is the content of their responses in line with what you are talking about? Do their questions reflect your subject area? Do their responses indicate that they have actually processed your information? Did they actually answer your question, or did they through out a fallacy or other piece of information that diverts attention?
PHYSIOLOGY
- Posture – This is the positional attributes of the persons body during your communication. A slumped posture can indicate any number of things, but suffice it to say that it is “without energy”. An erect or tenser body position indicates “energy”.
- Movement – Are they like a dead fish or a spastic monkey or any where in between? Again lack of movement will indicate “without energy” and movement will indicate “energy”.
- Stance – This is the position of their feet, hips, torso and arms/hands in relation to your body. There are a number of different stances that can indicate a number of different things. The intricacies are fodder for another post. For our purposes here, we are simply looking for engagement. Are they at least facing you within the 45 degree mark?
- Muscular contraction – Is there comfort or tension in their muscles? Is there a relaxed limpness or does it appear that they are ready for action?
FACE
- Lips – Their lips can range anywhere from parsed and thin from contraction to full and pouty. The meaning of each can range from anger to anxiety to sadness to flirting to comfort. What is important for your purpose is whether it is congruent with the content of your communication.
- Eye contraction – Much like the lips, eyes can be slight and squinting with little dilation all the way to fully open and fully dilated. This can represent anger and distaste to extreme interest and enjoyment.
- Jaw – The jaw is a great barometer for tension in a person. Is it loose and a bit open or tense, closed and possibly grinding? A loose jaw represents general comfort and engagement. A tense, closed jaw represents anxiety and tension in one way shape or form.
- Forehead – Your forehead is a good indicator of emotion and there are numerous positions that indicate numerous things. The point of our post is to establish engagement though so it is important that their forehead movement be congruent with the content of your speech. Exciting verbiage and body language should be followed by an uprising brow and pulling back of the forehead.
- Skin – What is the general tone of the skin. If you are moving from a mundane and boring topic to an exciting topic there should be a slight change in skin tone from the flush of blood moving to the face and vice versa. If you are moving from exciting to relaxing, there should be a slight change in tone toward a more colorless state.
- Accessing cues – Are they spending time in the appropriate areas? If you are describing visual components, are they looking upwards during your communication or left and right or downward? There should be at least some congruence with the content of your speech otherwise it is safe to say that they are constructing something else.
- Eye contact – This is bit of a debated topic and really is circumstantial. If you are scolding someone, they SHOULDN’T be making full eye contact as they would be in a submissive position. If they are, then they have other things going on inside of their head. Normally though, good eye contact that is ENGAGED (this means not glossed over) should be maintained.
This is not a comprehensive listing, but is pretty close and more than enough to get you going in the right direction. I promise that if you are cognizant of these attributes and become proficient at monitoring them you will become EXPONENTIALLY more effective in your communication than you are right now.
As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments. Until next time…
