Factors in the retention of information presented orally: The role of short‐term listening

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Abstract
While it seems obvious that “listening'’ is an important part of the communication process, substantial ambiguities exist in its definition and measurability. Previous measures of listening have been shown to measure only generalized mental ability and not a unitary skill related to information acquisition. Since researchers in human memory systems have distinguished between long‐ and short‐term components, it might be profitable to study listening from this point of view. If there is a separate and distinguishable short‐term component of listening it might differ from short‐term memory in the way it responds to repetition, masking, amounts of information and time lapse. In fact, repetition did not produce any substantial differences, while length, masking, and elapsed time interacted differently than a human memory model would predict. These findings argue for the existence of a distinct listening process that operates differently than short‐term memory and is also distinguishable from the usual definitions of listening.