Listening is a crucial element in the communication process. To date, however, research efforts have been unsuccessful in identifying the proper role that listening should play in the building of communication theory. To be a legitimate part of the communication process, listening must be placed in a conceptual framework similar to those found in the human information processing literature. Such a framework divides auditory perception and message comprehension (listening) into three parts: signal processing, literal processing, and reflective processing. Signal processing in human listening begins the language processing task, in which listeners engage their language competence to understand the phonetic, syntactic and semantic characteristics of the message. This process is brought to fruition during the next two phases of comprehension. During literal processing the listener is attempting to understand the basic meaning of the utterance while during reflective processing the listener thinks about the message, makes more extensive inferences, and evaluates and judges the speaker and the message. The way these components are activated is a function of the listening strategies employed. There is no one fixed listening strategy because listening is primarily a problem solving task ("What does the speaker mean?") Future research needs to focus on the three phases of the human information processing model and on the kinds of listening strategies that people naturally employ. (HOD)