How We Communicate

There are a number of different parts of the communication process;

These include:

‘Receptive communication’, which involves being able to hear, to listen (because we don’t or can’t always listen even if we can hear), to process what we are listening to (which means being able to make sense of what we are listening to, based on what we already know), and then understand. ¹⁶

There are three aspects to how we process information in communication, whether it involves listening or reading.

Speed of processing. Some people are fast processors; others are slower.
Amount of information to process. Some people can process large amounts of information at one time; others can only process smaller amounts at a time.
Complexity of the information. If the ideas or information are complex, it is harder to process.

‘Expressive communication’ involves organizing our thoughts, finding the right words, planning what we want to say, forming the words and sentences, and monitoring what we’re saying, so that if we make a mistake, we can correct it. Most people communicate using speech, which is how we move our lips and tongue in coordination with our breath. Speech is how we make the sounds, and the content is the language used to create the words and ideas. ¹⁶

'Cognitive-communication’: As communication involves listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking, our communication is affected by our cognitive abilities. These include attention, memory, goal-directed behaviour, planning and organizing, reasoning, and self-monitoring. ^4,5,8

For example, as you read this paragraph, you are using all of the cognitive abilities. You are paying attention and ideally blocking out other distractions, which we call ‘selective attention’. You have a goal in mind, perhaps to learn more about communication in the context of brain injury and intimate partner violence. You need to keep this goal front and centre in your mind, and then you need to remember what you already know about the topic, or at least remember what you’ve already read so far.

If your intention is to learn, then you will need to get this information into memory. In order to get it into memory, we use reasoning to see if it makes sense. Then, we organize it in a way that makes it efficient for us. How we organize information has a big impact on our memory and how we learn. Finally, if you are going to explain what you’ve learned, you will need to plan, organize what you want to say, and remember it. Throughout all of this, we use (or try to use) self-monitoring, so if we are making mistakes or our attention is drifting, we can modify what we are saying and/or change our behaviour.

So, if a person is experiencing challenges with any aspect of cognition, such as attention or memory, this will affect their communication. Following a brain injury, people often experience cognitive-communication challenges. ^4-11