Communication Yearbook 19

Brant R. Burleson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135152574
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Études sur la communication

Communication Yearbook 19, originally published in 1996 provides rich overviews of key developments in theory, method, and application. The volume contains ten integrative research revoews on diverse topics, including communication and the elderly, compliance gaining in organizations, interpersonal violence, communication technologies, media access and consumption ans well as three reviews addressing sex and gender issues.Each review synthesizes findings of past research, discusses current controversies and identifies challenges for future scholarship.

1 Communication and Older Adults

Jon F. Nussbaum

University of Oklahoma

Mary Lee Hummert

University of Kansas

Angie Williams

University of Oklahoma

Jake Harwood

University of Kansas

This chapter reviews research concerning communication and aging, focusing on three central areas. First, the authors look at cognitive developments in normal aging, such as changes in memory and name retrieval, and their implications for communication. This section also addresses research on attitudes toward older adults and the consequences of those attitudes for communication. Second, the authors examine issues relating to language, including research concerning linguistic modifications made by the young when talking to elderly people and changing features of the linguistic production of older adults. Third, the authors discuss relationships—late-life marriages, grandparent-grandchild relationships, and patient-physician relationships, among others—and the central role of communication in facilitating such relationships. Throughout, the authors address limitations in current knowledge and propose avenues for future research. The chapter concludes with a summary that synthesizes the diverse themes presented and offers a coherent life-span framework for future research into communication and aging.

NO single area of research within the general domain of developmental studies has received more attention from social scientists in recent years than has the study of older adults. This intense interest in every aspect of the aging process has occurred in tandem with the fact that the number of older adults in the United States is currently increasing at a rate nearly three times that of the population under age 65. Just as researchers within biology, physiology, and all the medical sciences have produced volumes of literature attempting to understand and explain the aging process, social scientists from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives have written extensively in an attempt to reach a richer understanding of the complex interactive world of older adults.

Research on communication and older adults is generally introduced in the context of “pure” demographics. According to the most recent statistics compiled by the American Association of Retired Persons (1991), there are approximately 31.1 million Americans over the age of 65, representing 12.5% of the total U.S. population. The fastest-growing segment of our population are individuals over the age of 85. We are becoming an increasingly older society. Reflecting these numbers is the massive shift in political power toward older adults, which, for researchers interested in the aging process, has led to more than $400 million in congressional appropriations for the National Institute on Aging. We should be cautious, however, about relying solely upon a demographic rationale for researching this area. This could be seen as sending a negative message to demographically weak groups (including, perhaps, older adults in a different era), and does not attend to the theoretical and practical reasons work in this area is of interest independent of demographics.

Beyond demographics and the political budgeting process, scholars in biology, physiology, zoology, psychology, and sociology have documented significant physical and economic changes that occur as we age. Communication scholars, on the other hand, have typically not accounted for life-span developmental changes in their various “mainstream” theories of the communicative process. In this chapter, we will not only review what we consider to be the significant developmental changes within the communicative process that directly affect older people, we will also show how these changes significantly alter the very nature of social life for members of this group. Stated quite simply, we feel that the enormous developmental changes that occur within us and around us as we age have the potential to produce a qualitatively different communication process in later life.

One of the basic principles that guides the writing of this chapter is our belief that communication lies at the core of the aging process. In a very real sense, we do not age alone. As Hummert, Nussbaum, and Wiemann (1994) note: “The abilities to interact and to maintain networks of relationships not only provide us with such affective states as happiness and satisfaction, but also function to meet our basic needs for companionship, success, and, eventually, help us to survive. The interpersonal communication that fuels our social world is as essential to our survival as any biological or physical process that keeps us alive” (p. 3).

During the past 20 years, there has been an explosion of literature concentrating upon numerous aspects of communication and aging. Perhaps the best reflection of this growth may be seen in the recent special issues of journals dedicated solely to communication and aging, such as have appeared in Communication Research, Language and Communication, Ageing and Society, Journal of Aging Studies, International Journal of Aging and Human Development, and, soon, Health Communication.

In addition, several books have recently been published by communication scholars that have addressed various aspects of the aging process (e.g., Coupland, Coupland, & Giles, 1991; Giles, Coupland, & Wiemann, 1990; Hummert, Wiemann, & Nussbaum, 1994; Nussbaum, Thompson, & Robinson, 1989). To date, however, this literature has not been the subject of critical review and analysis. Our approach toward this synthesis and critical analysis is multidisciplinary, multimethodological, multitheoretical, and life-span oriented. The richness of communication and aging research is the interdisciplinary nature of the topic area, which embraces the diversity found in different methods as well as different theoretical positions. We believe not only that communication research and theory can provide the integrative approach to the study of aging called for by the most prominent members of the gerontological community, but that it is essential for a full understanding of the aging process as it is enacted in individual experience.

Specifically, in this chapter we review, synthesize, and critically analyze three areas of communication and aging research: cognition, language, and relationships. The first major section of the chapter reviews the work of Susan Kemper, Ellen Ryan, Mary Lee Hummert, and many others who have studied the pragmatic effects of working memory, beliefs, and attitudes within the communication process of elderly individuals. A complete understanding of elderly communication cannot occur without knowledge of the cognitive processes influencing, and being influenced by, that communication. The second section of the chapter concentrates upon the work of Nik Coupland and Justine Coupland, Howard Giles, and others who have studied language in aging populations. Naturally, an understanding of the language used by, and to, elderly adults is central to an understanding of their communicative environment. Third, we review the work of Victor Cicirelli, Jon Nussbaum, Ron Adelman, and many others who have investigated older marriages, friendships, sibling relationships, grandparent-grandchild relationships, and physician-elderly patient relationships. Such relationships are built upon communication, and they constitute the social contexts in which most communication takes place. Within each of the three sections described above, we present a critique of current research along with an agenda for future investigations. In the final section of the chapter, we move beyond synthesis and analysis to make a bold statement concerning the future trends, agendas, and possibilities of research concentrating upon communication and older adults. In particular, we reemphasize the themes of interdisciplinary research and a life-span perspective that have been the primary strengths of research in this area since its inception.

Cognition

The study of communication and aging has addressed the role of cognition on two levels: first, in terms of the effects of physical aging on the cognitive resources employed in the production and processing of oral communication; and second, in terms of the social-cognitive processes that suggest appropriate communication strategies to use with older persons. The former line of research has been pursued primarily by experimental cognitive psychologists, the latter by social psychologists and communication scholars. We consider each of these lines of research in this section, concluding with a critical evaluation of the current approaches and suggestions for future research.

Cognitive Aging and Communication

Cognitive psychologists study many different aspects of the cognitive system, both structural (e.g., sensory registers, working memory, and long-term memory) and processual (e.g., attention, reasoning, rehearsal, processing speed, retrieval) (Howard, 1983). Of particular concern here are those aspects that not only exhibit age differences but also carry implications for the language processing and production capabilities of older persons: working memory (Wingfield, Stine, Lahar, & Aberdeen, 1988), processing speed (Salthouse, 1992), and name retrieval (Cohen & Faulkner, 1986b). Here we consider only those changes in working memory, processing speed, and name retrieval that are associated with normal aging patterns.

Working Memory, Processing Speed, and Language

Declines in working memory capacity and processing speed appear to affect the syntactic and discourse processing abilities of elderly people, even though their semantic knowledge remains intact (Kemper, 1992; Light, 1990; Ryan, 1991). For example, Kemper, Kynette, Rash, O’Brien, and Sprott (1989) collected both oral and written language samples from young adults and three groups of elderly individuals (aged 60-69, 70-79, and 80-92). An age-related loss of syntactic complexity was noted in both oral and written modalities. In particular, the number of clauses per utterance and left-branching clauses declined across the four age groups. Left-branching clauses are those that precede the main predicate in an utterance. These are presumed to be more difficult to process and produce than right-branching clauses because they require an individual to hold information in working memory. Regression analyses showed that working memory capacity, as measured by WAIS backward digit span (Wechsler, 1958), accounted for 82% of the variance in the percentage of left-branching clauses in the samples and 62% of the variance in the number of clauses per utterance. Age, education, health, and forward digit span did not add significantly to the regression equations.

Kemper, Kynette, and Norman (1992) followed the elderly participants in the Kemper et al. (1989) study for 3 years, collecting annual measures of working memory and syntactic complexity. Most of the participants did not experience significant changes in working memory over that period. However, of the 12 who did, 11 also experienced significant declines in syntactic complexity. Kemper et al. noted that these 11 individuals were in their late 70s to early 80s in Year 1, suggesting that this time period may be particularly critical for language development in older adulthood.

Just as working memory is related to elderly adults’ production of complex syntactic structures, it also affects their processing of those structures in the discourse of others. Norman, Kemper, Kynette, Cheung, and Anagnopoulos (1991) had college students and elderly adults listen to prose passages that were interrupted by pauses. During the pauses, participants were asked to recall the immediately preceding statements. Analysis showed that elderly participants had much poorer recall than young adults for the syntactically complex statements, but differed only slightly from the young participants in recall of simple statements. Working memory deficits in the elderly participants accounted for the age differences in recall.

Wingfield, Stine, and associates have conducted a number of studies on the language processing capabilities of young and elderly individuals (Stine & Wingfield, 1987; Stine, Wingfield, & Poon, 1986; Wingfield, Lahar, & Stine, 1989; Wingfield, Wayland, & Stine, 1992). Generally, they have used accuracy of recall as the dependent measure of processing capability, with an emphasis on how speaker rate and use of prosody may differentially affect recall of young and elderly persons. Their results show that a fast rate leads to poorer recall from both young and elderly, but that the rate of decline is greater for elderly individuals than for young ones (Stine & Wingfield, 1987; Stine et al., 1986; Wingfield et al., 1992). In terms of prosody, results indicate that elderly individuals, more than young ones, rely on prosodic cues such as pause and inflection to aid their processing of oral discourse (Stine & Wingfield, 1987; Wingfield et al., 1989, 1992).

Like Kemper and her colleagues, these researchers have noted a relationship between working memory measures and the age-related differences in discourse processing observed. For example, Stine and Wingfield (1987) report that listening span, a measure of working memory collected using oral stimuli (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980), accounted for 44% of the variance in recall performance of their subjects when entered into a regression equation prior to age. However, they also note that working memory performance paralleled age differences to such an extent that entering age into the equation removed the significant contribution of working memory.

Name Retrieval and Aging

As noted earlier, research tends to show that although working memory declines in elderly persons, their semantic memory remains intact (Salthouse, 1988). As a result, elderly individuals’ word-finding problems are no greater than those of young persons, even though their word search process may show the effects of slower processing speeds (Salthouse, 1988) or speech rates (Light, 1988). However, elderly people are plagued more than young ones by problems in retrieving proper names (see Cohen, 1994, for a review). This problem has been documented through both diary studies (Burke, MacKay, Worthley, & Wade, 1991; Cohen & Faulkner, 1986b) and experimental studies (Burke & Laver, 1990; Crook & West, 1990). To date, this selective deficit for proper names has not been tied definitively to specific changes in the cognitive system (Cohen, 1994). The most promising models (e.g., Burton & Bruce, 1992; Cohen, 1992) posit that the explanation lies in the interaction of lowered cognitive activation levels in older persons with the distinctive nature of the name memory system. As Cohen (1994) suggests, proper names have fewer and more arbitrary attribute links than do common nouns. The attribute links are more arbitrary in the sense that there is no semantic connection between the name Joe Bradley and his attribute works at the bakery comparable to that between the common noun baker and the attribute bakes bread. In addition, there are no synonyms for proper names, eliminating another retrieval route available for common nouns.

Cognitive Aging and Communicative Competence

Despite the clear evidence of language production and processing effects of age-related changes in elderly persons’ cognitive systems, the implication that these effects equal reduced communicative competence is not supported (Light, 1988; Ryan, 1991). Communicative competence refers to the ability to communicate appropriately in natural interactions in ways that are effective in achieving conversational goals (Canary & Spitzberg, 1989; Wiemann, 1977). Researchers stress that working memory capacity does not decline equally in all older people, and that elderly individuals often develop strategies that mitigate the effects of any decline on interaction (Light, 1990; Ryan, 1991). Older listeners’ greater reliance on prosody (Stine & Wingfield, 1987; Stine et al., 1986; Wingfield et al., 1992), for instance, may represent such a strategy. The way in which elderly adults process statements rich in information (i.e., statements with high propositional density; Kints...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Introduction
• 1. Communication and Older Adults
• 2. Sexual Communication in Interpersonal Contexts: A Script-Based Approach
• 3. Sexual Harassment: A Multidisciplinary Synthesis and Critique
• 4. Television Programming and Sex Stereotyping: A Meta-Analysis
• 5. The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis: Twenty-Five Years Later
• 6. The Meaning of “Communication Technology”: The Technology-Context Scheme
• 7. Communication Aspects of Dyadic Social Influence in Organizations: A Review and Integration of Conceptual and Empirical Developments
• 8. Argumentativeness and Verbal Aggressiveness: A Review of Recent Theory and Research
• 9. Intercultural Communication Competence: A Synthesis
• 10. Intercultural Communication Training: Review, Critique, and a New Theoretical Framework
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Editor
• About the Authors