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Recalling

The fifth stage of listening is recalling, remembering information after you’ve received, attended to, understood, and responded to it. As researchers L. Todd Thomas and Timothy Levine (1994) note, recalling is a crucial part of the listening process because we judge the effectiveness of listening based on our ability to accurately recall information after we’ve listened to it. Think about it: when a romantic partner asks, “Were you listening to me?” how do you demonstrate that you really were actively listening? By recalling everything that was said and reciting it back to your partner. Indeed, practically every scientific measure of listening uses recall accuracy as evidence of listening effectiveness (Janusik, 2007).

Your recall accuracy varies depending on the situation. When people have no task other than simple memorization, recall accuracy is high. For example, laboratory studies examining facial recall have found that when people are asked to memorize others’ faces, they can subsequently recall which faces they’ve seen with close to 100 percent accuracy (Freides, 1974). But when people are engaged in activities more complicated than straight memorization, recall accuracy plummets. That’s because in such cases, we’re receiving a lot of information, which increases the likelihood of perceptual and recall errors. Research on the recall accuracy of criminal eyewitnesses, for instance, has found that people frequently err in their recall of crimes, something most jurors and even the eyewitnesses themselves don’t realize (Wells, Lindsay, & Tousignant, 1980). Our recall of interpersonal and relational encounters is not exempt from error. Especially for negative and unpleasant interactions, such as conflicts, we tend to recall our own behavior as positive and constructive and the behavior of others as comparatively negative, regardless of what actually happened (Sillars, Smith, & Koerner, 2010).

How can you enhance your recall ability? One way is to use mnemonics, devices that aid memory. For example, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington, I delivered pizzas. Many of my deliveries went to the Wallingford neighborhood, a residential area west of campus. Wallingford was different from other neighborhoods because the streets had names instead of numbers: Eastern, Sunnyside, Corliss, Bagley, Meridian, Burke, Wallingford, Densmore, Woodlawn, and Ashworth. No matter how many times my supervisor told me, “No, Woodlawn is between Densmore and Ashworth!” I couldn’t recall the street order when I was out on a run. So I created a mnemonic. I took the first syllable of each street name, in order from east to west, and created a simple phrase, “Eas-Sun Cor-Bag Mer-Bur Wal-Den Wood-Ash.” The phrase was so distinct that it stuck in my mind, and from then on I had no problem locating the streets. The mnemonic was so powerful that even now, nearly 30 years later, I can recall it, even though I live thousands of miles from Seattle and the pizza restaurant for which I delivered no longer exists.

My experience creating a pizza-delivery mnemonic supports one of the most common findings in mnemonic research, the bizarreness effect, which causes us to remember unusual information more readily than commonplace information (Worthen, Garcia-Rivas, Green, & Vidos, 2000). The bizarreness effect occurs because unusual information and events trigger heightened levels of our attention and require us to work harder to make sense of them; thus, we remember the information better. The bizarreness effect can be used to enhance your recall of information by creating links between information you are listening to and unusual images or information that you can link with what you’re trying to remember. You can create unique phrases or acronyms based on the information you’re trying to remember, and use these as memory prompts. For example, the phrase “Cor-Bag” for me was so strange sounding that it was the most memorable part of my mnemonic, and I could remember the entire mnemonic by calling to mind “Cor-Bag.”

Several other practices can also help you boost your recall ability. Because listening is rooted in both visual and auditory information and memory is enhanced by using all five senses, try bolstering your memory of an interpersonal communication encounter by linking information you’ve listened to with pleasant or even silly visuals, scents, or sounds. To create visual images of an interpersonal encounter, you could write detailed notes or draw diagrams documenting the contents of a conversation. You could also link a new acquaintance’s name with a unique physical feature characterizing him or her. Finally, when you develop mnemonics or notes, review them repeatedly, including reciting them out loud, because repetition helps aid memory.