I just conducted a bunch of campus interviews today. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with Ni, but I definitely have always experienced what you describe above. I can pay better attention to what someone is saying if I'm not looking at them, nodding, etc. It sounds counterintuitive. Instead of doodling, I've developed a practice of taking very detailed notes. It helps to focus my attention on listening to them and what they are saying. I'm not sure how people perceive this, but it might be better than them seeing you doodling
Ah well, no, the doodling is exceptionally useful, necessary even, for being part of some group listening to some speaker. For one on one interviewing... actually, I've done both. For my sins I sometimes work as a language examiner. Back when it was informal and arranged by me, I'd set up students in pairs to talk to each other and I'd sit back with a notebook. I used to find I could concentrate very well for as long as I was watching the notebook and listening for language cues. If I looked up and become somehow engaged in the talk, thoughts of appropriate gradings would slip away like so much smoke in the wind. These days I have to follow a standard set by the British Council, and that forbids note taking completely. (Note taking is understood to unnerve candidates--they make improper associations between having just uttered language and you having just taken a note). It's also supposed to mimic an actual conversation, so one has to at times, generate appropriate questions. In other words, one is supposed to have listened. Since the scores I give the candidates are to standard, the interviews are going as they should (which is nice because the job pays well), but it is taxing. I'm constantly aware of how difficult it is to take detailed notice of language forms and purposeful usage of language forms, and at the same time attempt to assess. Which must sound strange--what is an appropriate assessment in that circumstance if not detailed notice of forms and forms used?
I haven't asked other examiners if they find the work tiring in the same way, so it might not be an N vs S thing, but one interesting point re typology and interacting with people.... since I have to mimic actual present interest in what the candidates say, I smile and nod, and it's occurred to me to notice
when I smile and nod. What content cues prompt a smile and a nod? Descriptions of things that happened in the world, emphasizing turning points in the mechanisms of what happened. Which I assume is me picking up on, or making the conversation into, Te signals. I started thinking about it just because I recognised that I wasn't reflecting feeling cues, not mimicking or mirroring feeling content, but was reflecting something. I have sometimes wondered if it's not impossible to come up with a menu of mimicked actions and brute-force model the deployment of other people's cognitive functions, if only to make candidates more comfortable and me less rigid of face.
Whatami, an F now?