A survey of narrative listening behaviors in 8-13-year-old children

Leisure reading confers significant benefits to children in both social and academic domains. However, the number of children who read for pleasure is decreasing and has been recently shown to drop off significantly between the ages of 8 and 9. Despite the rising popularity of audiobooks and podcasts, research on children listening to spoken stories remains in its infancy. Thus, the present study explores how children engage with these novel media. Fifty-two parents of children aged 8-13 years completed an online survey which asked about their children’s listening habits. Results showed that 74% of children listen to spoken stories, with the vast majority (92.5%) listening at least 1-2 times a week. While the survey revealed children are indeed engaging with both podcasts and audiobooks, being read aloud to continues to be the most popular format for story listening in this age group (77.4% of listeners). Across platforms, the genre most frequently listened to was fantasy stories (84.9%; more detailed descriptions of popular themes and sub-themes are described). In sum, access to technology is becoming an increasingly important part of children’s lives. The data described here provide a timely perspective and provide a basis for informed studies of listening engagement in children.

Millennials Talking Media

This book examines how a group of US Millennial friends in their late twenties embed both old media (books, songs, films, TV shows) and new media (YouTube videos, video games, and internet memes) in their everyday talk for particular interactional purposes. Multiple case studies are presented featuring the recorded talk of Millennial friends to demonstrate how and why these speakers make media references in their conversations. These recorded conversations are supplemented with participant playback interviews, along with ethnographic field notes. The analysis demonstrates how the speakers phonetically signal media references in the speech stream, how they demonstrate appreciation of the references in their listening behaviors, and how they ultimately use media references for epistemic, framing, and identity construction purposes, often (but not always) when faced with epistemic, or knowledge, imbalances as well as interactional dilemmas, or awkward moments in interaction. The analysis shows how such references contribute to epistemic management and frame shifts in conversation, which is ultimately conducive to different forms of Millennial identity construction. Additionally, this book explores the stereotypes embedded in the media that these Millennials quote, and examines the effects of reproducing those stereotypes in everyday social life. This fascinating book explores how the boundaries between screens, online and offline life, language, and identity are porous for Millennials, and weaves together the most current linguistic theories regarding knowledge, framing, and identity work in everyday interaction, illuminating the interplay between these processes.

Feeling Heard: Experiences of Listening (or Not) at Work

Listening has been identified as a key workplace skill, important for ensuring high-quality communication, building relationships, and motivating employees. However, recent research has increasingly suggested that speaker perceptions of good listening do not necessarily align with researcher or listener conceptions of good listening. While many of the benefits of workplace listening rely on employees feeling heard, little is known about what constitutes this subjective perception. To better understand what leaves employees feeling heard or unheard, we conducted 41 interviews with bank employees, who collectively provided 81 stories about listening interactions they had experienced at work. Whereas, prior research has typically characterized listening as something that is perceived through responsive behaviors within conversation, our findings suggest conversational behaviors alone are often insufficient to distinguish between stories of feeling heard vs. feeling unheard. Instead, our interviewees felt heard or unheard only when listeners met their subjective needs and expectations. Sometimes their needs and expectations could be fulfilled through conversation alone, and other times action was required. Notably, what would be categorized objectively as good listening during an initial conversation could be later counteracted by a failure to follow-through in ways expected by the speaker. In concert, these findings contribute to both theory and practice by clarifying how listening behaviors take on meaning from the speakers' perspective and the circumstances under which action is integral to feeling heard. Moreover, they point toward the various ways listeners can engage to help speakers feel heard in critical conversations.

Examining the Relationship Between Turkish Teacher Candidates’ Metacognitive Learning Strategies and Critical Listening Attitudes

This study aims at examining the relationship between Turkish teacher candidates’ metacognitive learning strategies and critical listening attitudes as well as determining whether theircritical listening attitudes and the use of metacognitive learning strategies vary with gender, age, year in college, and grade point average (GPA). Accordingly, a correlational survey design was used. The sample of the study consists of 191 Turkish teacher candidates studying at the Turkish teacher education program of Amasya University, Faculty of Education. The Metacognitive Learning Strategies Determining Scale developed by Gündoğan Çöğenli & Güven (Bilişüstü…) and the Critical Listening Attitude Scale developed by Taşkın were used as data collection tools. The data were analyzed using statistical package software SPSS 22.0. T-test, ANOVA, and correlation analysis were performed. A positive correlation was determined between Turkish teacher candidates’ critical listening behaviors and the use of metacognitive learning strategies.We believe that the findings of this study will contribute to determining critical listening attitudes.

The Role of Music in Everyday Life During the First Wave of the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Exploratory Study

Although music is known to be a part of everyday life and a resource for mood and emotion management, everyday life has changed significantly for many due to the global coronavirus pandemic, making the role of music in everyday life less certain. An online survey in which participants responded to Likert scale questions as well as providing free text responses was used to explore how participants were engaging with music during the first wave of the pandemic, whether and how they were using music for mood regulation, and how their engagement with music related to their experiences of worry and anxiety resulting from the pandemic. Results indicated that, for the majority of participants, while many felt their use of music had changed since the beginning of the pandemic, the amount of their music listening behaviors were either unaffected by the pandemic or increased. This was especially true of listening to self-selected music and watching live streamed concerts. Analysis revealed correlations between participants’ use of mood for music regulation, their musical engagement, and their levels of anxiety and worry. A small number of participants described having negative emotional responses to music, the majority of whom also reported severe levels of anxiety.

Understanding podcast users: Consumption motives and behaviors

Through a large-scale national survey, this study provided the first comprehensive examination of podcast users in the United States from the perspectives of motivation and usage. It deepened our understanding of this new on-demand audio platform in the context of consumption drivers, behaviors, and competing media options. The results showed that entertainment, information, and audio platform superiority were the most important motivators for podcast consumption. In addition, motives were found to affect listening behaviors, including listening settings, width, depth, and routine of listening, and usage of competing audio media, such as regular radio, online radio, and streaming music. The findings revealed that podcasting is a distinct medium with unique characteristics rather than a mobile, on-demand extension of existing audio platforms like radio. Podcast consumption, especially on today’s complex media platforms, is multidimensional and should be measured from multiple aspects and examined in various settings.

“Just the Way You Are”: Linking Music Listening on Spotify and Personality

Advances in digital technology have put music libraries at people’s fingertips, giving them immediate access to more music than ever before. Here we overcome limitations of prior research by leveraging ecologically valid streaming data: 17.6 million songs and over 662,000 hr of music listened to by 5,808 Spotify users spanning a 3-month period. Building on interactionist theories, we investigated the link between personality traits and music listening behavior, described by an extensive set of 211 mood, genre, demographic, and behavioral metrics. Findings from machine learning showed that the Big Five personality traits are predicted by musical preferences and habitual listening behaviors with moderate to high accuracy. Importantly, our work contrasts a recent self-report-based meta-analysis, which suggested that personality traits play only a small role in musical preferences; rather, we show with big data and advanced machine learning methods that personality is indeed important and warrants continued rigorous investigation.