Experimentally disentangling what's beneficial about elderspeak from what's not.

Abstract

Three studies evaluated different varieties of elderspeak using a referential communication task. Experiment 1 compared the effects of syntactic simplifications and semantic elaborations. Experiment 2 contrasted syntactic simplifications and prosodic exaggerations. Experiment 3 contrasted 2 different syntactic simplification strategies and 2 different prosodic exaggerations. Providing semantic elaborations and reducing the use of subordinate and embedded clauses benefit older adults and improve their performance on the referential communication task, whereas reducing sentence length, slowing speaking rate, and using high pitch do not. The use of short sentences, a slow rate of speaking, and high pitch resulted in older adults' reporting more communication problems. These experiments validate a version of elderspeak that benefits older adults without sounding patronizing and insulting.

Can the Mini-Mental State Examination Predict Capacity to Consent to Treatment?

“…In everyday clinical practice, it is also easy and may be supportive to appoint relatives or the guardian as interpreters, assistants, and personified memory aids during the informed consent process. Furthermore, semantic elaborations and a reduction in the use of subordinate and embedded clauses throughout the informed consent procedure may be beneficial (Kemper & Harden, 1999). Besides, including professional expertise in augmentative and alternative communication may be helpful in challenging cases.…”

“…(Kemper, & Harden, 1999) Professional expertise included in augmentative and alternative communication…”

Aging and syntactic representations: Evidence of preserved syntactic priming and lexical boost.

“…If it can be shown that the regular comprehension of more complex language actually benefits older adults because it biases them toward producing more complex syntactic structures themselves, this could impact on guidelines for how others, such as healthcare practitioners, should speak to older adults. This is particularly important given the evidence that caregivers tend to use simplified speech patterns when talking to older adults (elderspeak; Kemper, 1994), which may at times be harmful to the receiver (Kemper & Harden, 1999;Ryan et al, 1995).…”

Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier

“…This conjunction of improved performance, together with negative self-evaluation, has led to a search for versions of elderspeak that impart performance benefits without being patronizing or insulting Williams, Kemper, & Hummert, 2003). Kemper and Harden (1999), in a careful dissection of the properties of elderspeak, found that increasing semantic elaborations and reducing use of subordinate and embedded clauses improved performance on a referential communication task, but that reduced sentence length, slower speech rate, and higher pitch did not; the latter trio of properties also increased complaints of communication problems.…”