问答题 《复合题被拆开情况》 Do you think you’ re a good listener? Chances are you do. But studies show that most people seriously overestimate their ability to listen. The truth is we are generally not good at listening, and our listening comprehension declines as we age. This was proven by Dr. Ralph Nichols, a pioneer in the scientific study of listening behaviour. With the help of school teachers in Minnesota, he conducted a simple experiment, to test students’ listening skills. He had teachers stop what they were doing mid-class, and then asked students to describe what their teachers had been talking about. You might assume that older kids, with more developed brains, would be better listeners. The results, however, showed otherwise: While 90 percent of first- and second-graders gave correct responses, this percentage dropped rapidly as the students got older. A little under half of junior high students could remember correctly, and only 25 percent of high school students got the answers right. So why aren’ t we good at listening? One reason concerns the speed at which we think. The adult brain can process up to around 400 words per minute, more than three times faster than the speed an average person speaks. This means that we can easily think about something else while someone is talking to us, allowing our mind to wander or get sidetracked. Thinking about how you will reply while someone is still talking is one of the most common barriers to effective listening. The younger students in Dr. Nichols’s experiment were better listeners partly because their brains were less developed—they lacked the extra brain power to be distracted. Another factor that contributes to our poor listening is our ever-decreasing attention span. According to a study conducted by Microsoft, the age of smartphones has had a negative impact. In 2000—around the time the mobile revolution began—the average human attention span was 12 seconds. By 2013, it had fallen to 8 seconds. Our mobile devices also provide constant distractions, which can be very disruptive to listening. Test results have shown that being interrupted by a cell phone message lowers listening comprehension by 20 percent.