Enhancing Retention and Retrieval

Have you ever listened with interest to a message, understood and accepted it, yet later had trouble remembering it? This experience points to a final aspect of message processing: retention and retrieval. Retention is the accurate storage of information; retrieval is the process of accessing stored information at the proper time. When messages are memorable, both processes occur. But what makes a message memorable?

First, active rehearsal and repetition make a message more memorable. Senders can encourage message retention by using repetition within the message, by asking questions during a message that encourage receivers to repeat message elements mentally, or by providing follow-up activities or exercises that re­inforce information rehearsal. Another way to increase message recall is to make information relevant to receivers’ experiences. Information related to self-perceptions appears to be stored more readily than less relevant information. Informa­tion relevant to receivers will also be retrieved more easily.

Message retrieval is often “triggered” by some external stimulus. We pass a restaurant and suddenly remember that we were supposed to meet a friend for lunch. We see an acquaintance jogging and suddenly recall our good intentions to exercise more often. If senders tie message proposals to appropriate triggers, infor­mation retrieval can be increased. Let’s look at an example. A speaker wants chil­dren to refuse rides from strangers. To make sure the children remember to say no and run away, the speaker gets the children to role-play. He or she may ask the children, “What should you do when you see a strange car drive up?” and may rehearse their reply or may even take the children outside and have a part­ner pretend to be a stranger. In this way, the response of saying no and running away is tied to a specific stimulus trigger. The children know when and under what circumstances to remember the desired response.

Finally, in order to increase both retention and retrieval, messages should be summarized in simple but vivid style. When we remember information, we do not remember it exactly as it was said. We remember it in our own ways. Often we simplify it, cutting out inessential details, retaining only the essence of the message. Of course, when left to do this ourselves, we may choose the wrong information to remember. Effective senders cut down on distortion by supplying us with simple points to take away with us. The simpler and more vivid these summaries are, the better we will retain them. Slogans, jingles, and alliterative lists, for example, are easily stored and retrieved, as are emotionally charged exam­ples and vivid images. To ensure retention, ending on a strong note is particu­larly important.

So far, we have looked at this problem from the point of view of the sender, and we have reviewed ways to make messages interesting, clear, con­vincing, and memorable. These methods are not foolproof, of course. If a re­ceiver decides not to listen, even a great speaker is powerless. Communication is a cooperative enterprise, after all, and both partners bear responsibilities. In the final section of this chapter, we'll look at one of the most important communication skills: listening.

Listening: How Receivers Can Improve Decoding

When we think of communication we almost always think about message sending. We picture people conversing or giving public speeches or perhaps writing letters. We neglect the other, equally important half of communication: listening. Yet studies show that we spend more time listening than engaging in any other form of communication. And studies also show that most of us have very poor listening skills.

Why do we listen so poorly? One answer lies in our cultural values. As Americans, we value activity and independence. We tend to believe that actively expressing our own ideas is more valuable than passively attending to others’ messages. This view reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of listening. Al­though listening may seem passive, it is not. While we listen, we actively create meaning and construct our own versions of reality. Seen in this light, listening is one of the most important forms of communication.

Because of the low value our culture places on listen­ing, most of us have learned to be poor listeners. Parents and teachers make sure we develop skill in reading, writing, and speaking. Listening, however, is usually something we have to learn on our own, and the models we learn from are often not very good. Florence Wolff and her colleagues tell us that our parents often train us to be “nonlisteners”. When parents tell a child, “Don’t pay any attention to that,” or, “I don’t want to hear that in this family” they model nonlistening. By not paying attention or by interrupting each other in mid-sentence, parents tell us that it’s not important to hear others out. In school, the situation is almost as bad. Teachers, themselves untrained in listening, make up for students’ listening deficiencies by patiently repeating themselves. By failing to demand high levels of listening performance, they too may be reinforcing nonlistening.

Luckily, listening can be improved, just as we have learned to be poor lis­teners, we can learn to be more effective ones. By becoming more aware of the listening process and by practicing listening skills, we can improve our listening effectiveness enormously.

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