Active Listening was a type of communication identified in the research of some graduate students of Dr. Carl Rogers in the Department of Psychology at

 Ohio State University in the late 1930's and early 1940's. These researchers studied tape recordings of counseling sessions with students having various kinds of personal problems. They found that "mirroring" or "feeding back" the students' messages encouraged them to probe "deeper" and find the root causes of their problems and come up with their own solutions. Dr. Rogers called this listening "Reflective Listening".

On the other hand, certain other kinds of responses to the students' talk blocked their going deeper-even made them feel misunderstood and frustrated...