Language, health and aging: notes I

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Language, health and aging notes I

• Course Description
• Should we use or avoid a simplified speech
  register (Elderspeak) when speaking to older
  people? What are the changes in our language as
  we age? This class gives an overview of the
  literature on language and aging, including
  impaired language, with a focus on enhancing
  communication as part of caregiving. The first
  half of the course will be face-to-face the
  second half will be online, when you will partner
  (via CENTRA) with students in Taiwan who are
  taking a similar course. Cross-listed with
  Gerontology, this course also fulfills
  cross-cultural competencies.
• Spring, 2006

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The importance of communication
L.Worrall L. Hickson. 2003. Communication
disability in aging. Delmar, p. 12
3

How older adults use language
L.Worrall L. Hickson. 2003. Communication
disability in aging. Delmar, p. 140
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Speech/language early development

• By 3-4 years
• Integration of content, form, use
• By 5-6 years
• Knows the language
• By 9 years
• Complex messages
• Normal aging
• Few changes in speech language

http//www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/la
nguage_development.shtml
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Pre-school language in use

• Birth to 2 Parents reactions to non-intentional
  communication lead to
• Intentional communication
• Joint attention
• At 3 independent communication
• beginning of narration, with descriptions
• By 4 and 5, speaker adds
• setting,
• rehearsal of action

See works by Katharine Nelson and by Robin Fivush
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Starting school

• Can sustain longer conversations
• Knows how to handle
• shifting topics
• shifting styles
• Uses different genres (adds literacy)
• Begins to use language of persuasion and
  negotiation

Nelson, Fivush, and a run through PsychInfo
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The adult speaker

• Integrated content, form and use
• Discourse incorporates
• Persuasion
• Argument
• Narration
• Pragmatics crucial for social interaction

Try this quiz http//www.learner.org/discoveringps
ychology/18/e18expand.html
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Pragmatics how to do things with words

• Rules for situational use of language
• What to say when
• Greetings and similar routines
• Turn-taking
• Interruptions and overlaps
• How to say something
• And when not to say it

Start here http//www.asha.org/public/speech/deve
lopment/pragmatics.htm
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Communication and Aging Chapter 1

• The life span perspective
• process - do adults think differently? (This is
  what came to the centre of Knowles theory of
  andragogy In pedagogy, the concern is with
  transmitting the content, while in andragogy, the
  concern is with facilitating the acquisition of
  the content.)
• situations - do adults find themselves in
  different circumstances to other age groups?
• experiences - does the accumulation of experience
  change things? What difference does having been
  through a greater range of things make?

Nussbaum et al, Ch 1
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Stages in adulthood

• Middle adulthood age forty to sixty-five 
• Midlife transition-forty to forty-five
• Entering middle adulthood-forty-five to fifty
• Age fifty transition-fifty to fifty-five
• Culmination of middle adulthood-fifty-five to
  sixty
• Late adulthood age sixty on
• Late adult transition-sixty to sixty-five

L.Worrall L. Hickson. 2003. Communication
disability in aging
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language strategies

• Support maintenance of identity and place in the
  larger world
• Power shifts in relationships with family
• Power shifts in relationships with friends
• And a good
  bit more

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Later we will look at meanings

• Part of language across the lifespan is our
  learning when and how to privilege specific
  meanings.
• privileged meanings shape the way we understand
  languagesuch prominent meanings affect our
  linguistic and psycholinguistic behavior in areas
  such as
• jokes irony
• metaphors and idioms innovation
• What is the effect of accessible meanings on
  speech production and comprehension? Giora
  (2003) looks at how, in addition to contextual
  information, salient meanings and sense of words
  and fixed expressions shape our linguistic
  behavior (3)

R. Giora (2003) On our mind Salience, context,
and figurative Language. Oxford UP
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Learning about theory

• It is a great relief, though, that the quest for
  truth must always fail, so that any new theory is
  bound to be improved, reversed, or replaced by
  new thinking. (Giora, On Our Mind, viii)

R. Giora (2003) On our mind Salience, context,
and figurative Language. Oxford UP
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Theories of successful aging stress social
interaction

• disengagement theorymutual, insuitable (systems
  needs are filled), universal (system disengages
  in order to provide stability)
• activity theoryresearch findings about
  activities and social relationships that
  contradict disengagement
• continuity theoryexplains why some disengage,
  others dont, and both can be happy

Nussbaum et al, Ch 1
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Theories, continued

• socioemotional selectivity theory keyed to
  social exchange which is basically keyed to the
  notion of tradeoffs in terms of social
  relationships
• optimize rewards from close personal
  relationships
• minimize costly interactions with unknowns
• selective optimizationpropositions by which
  people select, optimize and compensate for the
  losses (such as reserves, physical strenfgth)
• social-environmental theoryinteraction of person
  with environment and socio-cultural norms that
  define roles and attitudes, which impact relations

Nussbaum et al, Ch 1