Communication and Aging

Jon F. Nussbaum, Loretta L. Pecchioni, James D. Robinson, Teresa L. Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135667252
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This text employs a communication perspective to examine the aging process and the ability of individuals to adapt successfully to aging. It continues the groundbreaking work of the first edition, emphasizing a life-span approach toward understanding the social interaction that occurs during later life. The edition provides a comprehensive update on the existing and emerging research within communication and aging studies and considers such topics as notions of successful aging, positive and negative stereotypes toward older adults, and health communication issues. It raises awareness of the barriers facing elderly people in conversation and the importance such conversations have in elderly people's lives. The impact of nonrelational processes, such as hearing loss, are considered as they impact relationships with others and affect the ability to age successfully. The book is organized into 14 chapters. Each chapter is written so that the reader is presented with an exhaustive review of the pertinent and recent literature from the social sciences. As in the first edition, when the literature is empirically based, the communicative ramifications are then discussed. Readers of this volume will gain greater understanding of the importance of their communicative relationships and how significant they remain across the life span. Developed for students in communication, psychology, nursing, social gerontology, sociology, and related areas, Communication and Aging provides important insights on communication to all who are affected by the aging process.

CHAPTER 1

Communication and Aging: Pragmatic and Theoretical Considerations

The aging process has both fascinated and frightened human beings since the beginning of time. Only within the last several decades, however, have social scientists, including a growing number of communication scholars, systematically attempted to document, understand, and explain the dynamic changes in behavior that occur as an individual ages. This book approaches the aging process from a communication perspective. The purpose of this book is to shed new light on the ever-increasing amount of information concerning individuals of ages 65 and over that constantly flows from the social sciences.

In this chapter, we will briefly explain what is meant by a communication perspective and how this perspective is a particularly interesting and useful way of viewing the behavior of elderly individuals. In addition, we will highlight the importance of a life-span view as a means of organizing and understanding human communication. Finally, we will conclude with a brief discussion of the most popular theories of successful aging, which have at their core the successful maintenance of an individual’s communicative world.

COMMUNICATION WITHIN AN AGING SOCIETY

Every author who writes for the field of communication must at some point attempt to define communication. Hundreds of authors have offered definitions using concepts such as intentionality, shared meanings, feedback loops, and symbol systems. The problem with the great majority of these definitions is the state of confusion they create. In some ways we knew more about communication before we attempted to articulate a precise definition of communication.

For the purpose of this book, therefore, we will simply state that communication entails an individual emitting cues in the presence of another individual and the meaning that those cues produce (Wilmot, 1980). This view equates communication with behavior and stresses the pragmatic, functional nature of that behavior. The communication (behavior) that takes place between two or more individuals defines their relationship. It is at this level, the relational level, that this book is written. Gregory Bateson, a noted anthropologist, and his followers (many of whom, like William Wilmot, Edna Rogers, and B. Aubrey Fisher, are communication scholars) have written extensively on the relational nature of communication and the benefits of describing human behavior from this perspective. For us, the elderly individual is not seen as a personality inventory or an entity fulfilling a prescribed role, but as an active participant in a system of relationships, who is constantly adapting and attempting to maintain relational equilibrium. We believe the ability to lead a long, satisfying life is dependent to a great extent on each individual’s relational system and how that system is maintained.

Before analyzing the factors that impact the communicative world of the elderly individual, we briefly discuss the reasons for studying communication and aging. We begin with the demography of aging.

The United States is becoming an increasingly mature country. The Administration on Aging (1998) published information, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, that in 1997 people 65 years old or older numbered 34.1 million or 12.7% of the U.S. population. Since 1900, the percentage of Americans over the age of 65 has tripled, while the number of these individuals has grown by a factor of 11. By the time the youngest members of the baby-boom generation reach 65 (in the year 2030), depending on how the estimate is conducted, between 58 and 78 million Americans, representing 19 to 21% of the total population, will be over 65. The present older population is, of course, also getting older. The fastest growing segment of the population is the oldest-old, those individuals 85 years old and older. This group increased by 274% between 1960 and 1994. For whatever reason, be it advances in medical technology, improved social programs for elderly people, or some evolutionary advance in the adaptational mechanism of the human species, we are all living longer. This longevity affects every facet of our lives, from marital relationships to marketing strategies to architectural design. For no other reason than their sheer numbers, older people in this society are gaining attention.

Coupled with the increasing population of elderly individuals are the special needs, based in part on physiological imperatives, that make this subsegment of the population qualitatively different from other subsegments of American society. As individuals pass the age of 65, they must constantly adapt to changes in their lives that are often beyond their control. Elderly individuals experience physical declines in capabilities, ranging from slowed reaction time (Stern, Oster, & Newport, 1980) to reduced problem-solving ability (Giambra & Arenberg, 1980). At this same time, elderly individuals must cope with their feelings of being near death (Kubler-Ross, 1975) or the notion that they are entering the final stage of life (Erikson, 1963). The ability to cope and to successfully adapt to these life changes may be dependent on the communicative skills of the elderly individual as they are used to produce a stable relational network. These relational networks help determine the satisfactory or unsatisfactory nature of later life.

Therefore, in addition to the demographic imperative for studying older adults, there are a variety of theoretical and practical reasons for studying communication and aging. Significant developmental changes occur in older adults, which affect communicative processes, which in turn directly affect older people. As Nussbaum, Hummert, Williams, and Harwood (1996) note “… these changes significantly alter the very nature of social life for members of this group” (p. 2). On the theoretical level, communication scholars have not accounted for these developmental life-span changes in “mainstream” communication theories. For example, theories of relational development and maintenance do not account for the increasing experience and, it is hoped, knowledge from managing relationships that occurs throughout an individual’s life span. This lack of attention to the life span limits the generalizability of any such theory.

On the pragmatic level, older adults use a variety of communicative strategies in order to maintain their sense of identity and place in the larger world. One of the compelling pragmatic reasons for studying communication and aging is the unique function that communication plays within the older population. The communicative behavior of older people serves several critical helping functions (Troll, 1980). First, communication defines the changing power relationships between the elderly person and both family and friends that occur as the individual ages. As an elderly individual retires or in some way becomes more dependent upon family members and friends, this loss of independence is accompanied by a loss of power in these relationships. This power loss is not only reflected but created within these relationships by communication. Neugarten and Gutmann (1968) demonstrated that with increasing age elderly men become less competitive and less dominant, whereas elderly women tend to become more dominant and more competitive. These behavioral changes have profound effects not only on their marital relationships but also on their relationships with their children, grandchildren, and friends. The fuel for these relational changes is the communication that transpires within the relationships.

Communication serves a second important pragmatic function as the one mechanism that can aid in the replacement of lost mobility; such a replacement is necessary to ensure an individual’s active participation in family affairs, religious activities, and community events. Through the relational network of family and friends, an older person continues to share information about the larger world. If an elderly individual cannot physically place himself or herself at a community function, the individual will lose touch—unless friends or family members serve as messengers or information sources.

A third important pragmatic function of communication within the aging society is the simple awareness of needs. Cicirelli (1981) discovered that adult children who interact more frequently with their elderly parents not only were more informed about the needs and desires of their parents, but also were regarded as being more likely to help their parents. Cicirelli (1981) suggests that adult children be encouraged to communicate frequently with their parents so as to be better able to understand and to fulfill the special needs of their elderly parents.

In addition, the elderly are of interest to communication scholars because they have participated in more and longer-lasting relationships. They have had to adapt to more communicative situations than any other group of individuals. The elderly have a wealth of communicative information to impart, and all we have to do to benefit from their experience is to simply listen!

LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENTAL COMMUNICATION

The field of communication has only recently begun to examine the developmental nature of the communicative act, as evidenced by Nussbaum (1989) and Coupland and Nussbaum (1993). Other social sciences have placed a major emphasis on human development for much longer, as evidenced by the work of Reese and Overton (1970), Baltes, Reese, and Nesselroade (1977), and Lerner and Ryff (1978). One trend in the fields of psychology and sociology is to focus on development throughout an individual’s life span (Santrock, 1983), and a major goal of this book is to suggest that communication is a developmental phenomenon with important implications throughout life.

The major theme of a developmental approach to the study of human behavior is change. “The life-span developmental approach emphasizes the lifelong nature of development and asserts that our understanding of any point in the life-span is enhanced by taking into account the individual’s past history and perhaps his or her future expectations” (Huyck & Hoyer, 1982, p. 2). Life-span developmentalists do not postulate any specific theory of change. Instead, they tend to be pluralistic, accepting several worldviews as useful explanations of human development. A central concept within life-span development is process. Just discovering change is not enough. One must strive to understand and explain the process of that change.

A popular misconception about the process of change, which has existed since Piaget and Erikson first posited stages in their theories of development, has been that the postulation of stages is a necessity for the understanding of change. Actually, stages only serve as a tool to aid our understanding of human development. It would be limiting to think that human communicative behavior must pass through predetermined stages.

Because life-span development is a relatively new way of viewing human behavior, many interesting debates can be found in the social scientific literature. Readers interested in a more exhaustive discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of life-span development should see Baltes, Reese, and Lipsett’s (1980) thorough overview.

The study of human behavior across the life span has led to new research methods consistent with an emphasis on the process of change. The most common research methods in life-span development are the cross-sectional method, the longitudinal method, and various sequential methods. Of these, the most frequently used method is the cross-sectional method, which involves gathering information from individuals of different ages at one point in time. The researcher can then compare, for example, the behavior of married individuals at age 25 with the behavior of married individuals at age 65. The major disadvantage of this method is the confounding of cohort influences within the design. This is to say that individuals born in 1934 may have had different life experiences than individuals born in 1974, and these different experiences may have nothing to do with age variation. Their marital relationships, for example, may be different because of their life experiences rather than their different ages.

A researcher using the longitudinal method gathers information from the same individuals at several times. This is the ideal method for studying developmental change. The researcher can compare each individual at 25 years old, 30 years old, 35 years old, and so forth, noting trends as the individual ages. This method, however, does have several nagging problems, such as the selective attrition of both subjects and researchers, repeated testing with the same test, and enormous costs. Schaie (1983) summarizes the major longitudinal studies to that date from throughout the world and offers the reader an excellent description of the longitudinal method.

The many problems associated with the previous methods led researchers to the various sequential-method data-collection strategies. Cross-sequential strategies combine longitudinal with cross-sectional methods to eliminate or at least control many confounding problems. In cross-sequential studies, individuals from several age categories are studied over a relatively short period of time. Baltes, et al. (1977) provide a very readable explanation of sequential methods.

The methods employed by life-span developmental researchers are only one of the several pragmatic conventions used to better understand life-span behaviors. An additional convention with widespread acceptance is to divide the life-span into 10 life phases: preconception, prenatal, infancy, early childhood, late childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood, old age, and death (Reese, 1978). This book concentrates upon the old-age phase of the life span. But one must keep in mind the developmental nature of communication. The relationships about which we write and those factors that affect the relational world of older people have a developmental history that enables us to more fully describe, explain, and understand communication and aging.

THEORIES OF SUCCESSFUL AGING

Human beings share at least one fact with simple, single-celled organisms—the process of aging. The physiology of all living beings determines their structures and functions to a great degree. The causes of aging have been the subject of many decades of research by numerous biologists. Biological aging is a constant, and, although it is a fascinating process, we, as social scientists, are much more concerned with how human beings cope with and adapt to aging than we are with the actual physiology of aging. We believe that at the core of any successful attempt to adapt to biological aging is communication. Because humans predict, understand, and control their environments to a great degree symbolically, such a conclusion seems warranted. Many social scientists share this belief and have constructed numerous theories of successful aging. Of these, the following six theories will be discussed: disengagement theory, activity theory...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents in Brief
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Communication and Aging: Pragmatic and Theoretical Considerations
• Chapter 2 Attitudes and Ageism
• Chapter 3 Relational Considerations
• Chapter 4 Mass Media Use and Aging
• Chapter 5 Mass Communication Theory and Media Portrayals of Elderly People
• Chapter 6 Work, Leisure, and Retirement
• Chapter 7 Aging and the Family: Marital Relationships
• Chapter 8 Aging and the Family: Relational Lifestyle Changes
• Chapter 9 Aging and the Family: Parents, Grandparents, and Siblings
• Chapter 10 Friendship and Aging
• Chapter 11 Barriers to Conversation Facing Elderly People
• Chapter 12 Health, Communication, and Aging
• Chapter 13 Death and Dying
• Chapter 14 Successful Aging
• Author Index
• Subject Index