The Third Pillar of Perceptual-Expression: Listening as a Psychextric Framework
By: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
Introduction: Beyond Speech and Writing
In an earlier framework, psychextrics identified two core pillars of perceptual-expression: oral expression and written expression. These dimensions captured how individuals communicate ideas, either literally or abstractly, across speech and text. But new insights suggest this model is incomplete. A third dimension — listening-expression — has been largely overlooked in cognitive science, despite its profound role in shaping perception, communication, and intelligence.
Listening is not a passive act of reception. It is an active encoding process, where auditory input is filtered, structured, and re-expressed internally through memory and cognition. Just as people can be literal or abstract in speech and writing, they can also be literal or abstract in listening. Recognising listening-expression as a third pillar expands our understanding of human cognition and uncovers why so many misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and hidden intelligences persist.
Listening as Expression
Listening is often treated as the silent twin of speech — a background process necessary for dialogue. But in psychextric terms, listening is itself a form of expression because it determines what meaning an individual encodes and later reproduces in speech, writing, or behaviour.
- Literal Listening: Individuals focus on the explicit content of words. Metaphors, irony, or implicit cues may be overlooked.
- Abstract Listening: Individuals quickly re-encode meaning, grasp subtext, metaphor, and relational patterns beyond the literal words.
- Mixed Listening: Many shift between modes depending on context — listening literally in legal or technical settings, but abstractly in poetry, negotiation, or philosophy.
The third pillar reveals that the fidelity of communication is not just about what is said or written, but how it is heard.
Thalamic Spectruming and the Neuroscience of Listening
Neuroscience supports this distinction. The medial geniculate nucleus (MGN) of the thalamus routes auditory signals, while higher-order nuclei like the medial dorsal nucleus (MDN) interface with working memory, semantic processing, and inferential reasoning. Depending on neurotype, some brains privilege syntactic parsing (literal listening), while others privilege semantic inference (abstract listening).
This explains why two people can hear the same sentence and walk away with two entirely different understandings — not due to inattention, but due to listening-spectrum diversity.
Case Studies: Listening-Expression in Action
- Education: Some students thrive when learning through lectures (strong abstract listeners) but falter when assessed by rote-written exams. Others excel in written tests but struggle to extract meaning from oral explanations.
- Justice: In courtroom settings, literal listeners may cling to surface phrasing, while abstract listeners draw inferences about intent. Misalignment here can tilt verdicts, explaining jury inconsistencies even when evidence is identical.
- Social Life: Misunderstandings often arise when one partner encodes conversations literally and the other abstractly. Arguments may ensue until both realise they are, in fact, aligned — just processing the same words through different listening modes.
Why Listening-Expression Has Been Overlooked
Conventional cognitive science has privileged output (speech, writing) as the marker of intelligence and largely ignored input diversity. Yet listening shapes not only how we understand others, but also how we later express ourselves.
The neglect of listening-expression stems from two assumptions:
- That all listeners decode language uniformly.
- That listening is passive rather than an active neurocognitive process.
Both assumptions are flawed. Psychextrics reframes listening as an expressive pillar in its own right, essential for mapping human communication.
Implications of the Third Pillar
- Education: Recognising listening spectrums can help teachers design inclusive classrooms, supporting both literal and abstract listeners.
- Workplace: Leaders and negotiators with high abstract listening skills can bridge divides, while literal listeners ensure clarity and precision.
- AI Integration: Current AI focuses on text and speech generation. Integrating diverse listening-expression into AI systems could create more adaptive, context-sensitive communication tools tailored to individuals.
Conclusion: The Equal Voice Depends on the Third Pillar
The two-pillar framework of oral and written expression remains vital, but it is incomplete. The third pillar of listening-expression completes the psychextric model, showing that communication is not simply what we say or write, but also what we hear and encode.
Listening-expression explains why some individuals excel in diplomacy, mediation, or art interpretation — not because they speak or write better, but because they hear differently. It also explains why misunderstandings are so common, even among speakers of the same language.
By naming and defining this overlooked dimension, psychextrics advances a fuller account of human intelligence and communication. Just as oral and written expression shaped civilisation, listening-expression may prove to be the hidden foundation of mutual understanding in the age of AI.
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