Listening is the conscious processing of the auditory stimuli that have been perceived through hearing. Listening differs from obeying. Parents may commonly conflate the two, by telling a disobedient child that he “didn’t listen to me”. However, a person who receives and understands information or an instruction, and then chooses not to comply with it or to agree to it, has listened to the speaker, even though the result is not what the speaker wanted.
