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 saying. Unfortunately this is very difficult to know for two important reasons:
1. 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.
2. 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.
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To learn more about Sensory Acuity and other forms of effective communication, please search my site The Communication Expert or connect with me on Skype.
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Psychology is one of the most interesting branches of science because there are so many unknowns.”‘,