Talk:Elderspeak

Student edits and suggestions for editing
This is the link to the group talk page of the group editing Elderspeak as apart of the course assignment as indicated above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dg14pv/sandboxelderspeakgroup
 * Any comments or suggestions on improving the page or the edits that the students made would be welcome. LynnMcCleary (talk) 22:12, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello Elderspeak group, I have been assigned to your page to review and after reading through all your information and ideas I think you did a great job of making this article more professional and adding useful information to the existing sections. I think you added a great picture that gives an idea of the topic of the page and relates well. I noticed that you added some good information to the 'disadvantages' section and I agree with you all commenting that these changes were positive and could possibly be helpful to other readers. I think that having the addition of the 'Alzheimer's' section was a smart move and gives a specific example of a time where Elderspeak can be very negatively used. All the information in this section is relevant and meets all the good article criteria. My Wikipedia page to edit was on the elderly and communication with the elderly and during my research Elderspeak came up quite frequently as a barrier to good communication with elderly people. A resource I found referred to Elderspeak as the Communication Accomidation Theory and gave me the idea that elderly people can be empowered with the right type of communication accommodation, which rarely includes Elderspeak. Reading your article also gave me more information I didn't have previously on this topic. Having some previous research knowledge on the topic I found your edits to be interesting and enlightening to read. I personally think that all of the good article criteria was met because; your additions were well-written with good sentence structure, it was verifiable using good secondary sources and good citations, you were broad in coverage and didn't include any extra or unneeded information, the page was neutral and stable. As well as illustrated as I previously stated. Some further comments/suggestions I could make to your group would be: 1. to add some more illustrations if possible(I know the Communication accommodation theory has some interesting diagrams that could be useful to readers) 2. possibly expanding on the topic by adding new sections in relation to Elderspeak and communication accommodation.

Overall I think your group did a good job editing this article, keep up the good work. Kv13hu (talk) 00:03, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Kv13hu, thank you. Could you please give me some more direction on the images on accommodation theory? I checked Communication accommodation theory and didn't see any images. Was it a different page you where thinking of? Thanks again.--Adams sam (talk) 16:19, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello editors of Elderspeak! I have also been assigned to give informative feedback on your edits for this article. I would like to begin by congratulating you overall on completing the wikipedia editing stages. As I notice from below you have editing and added information to the disadvantages section, as well as the Alzheimer's section. In relation to the amount of information you have added it is very impressive, and visually your edits are very well done using many of the wikipedia cheats. Good work!


 * When reading the information on disadvantages I found the information to be relatively neutral which is a criteria of a good article.
 * Addressing the advantages and disadvantages section of the article, I did find that some of the disadvantages you had said were somewhat contradicting the advantages listed above in the article. For example, an advantage to elderspeak mentioned was that "older adults often have less trouble communicating when their speaking partner simplifies the structure of their sentences", and then in your disadvantages you continue to say "older adults find fewer opportunities to communicate effectively" in relation to elderspeak. If I were to make any suggestions I would suggest making the disadvantages and advantages much more clear and to ensure there is no contradicting statements between the two.
 * The actual information itself and resources used for this article are very impressive and well done, and I believe they meet the criteria of a good wikipedia article.
 * I believe the image chosen to show in the article may be somewhat misleading. I understand that for this article finding an image may be extremely difficult, however I don't believe it is completely obvious that elderspeak is taken place in the picture. There is a possibility that the image could just show two people talking, and not actually participating in elderspeak. So perhaps an image with writing, like a comic or something of that kind would better suit this topic for a visual representation.
 * What I found about the information added to this article that was extremely well done was how broad the information was. There were not too many specifics that lead the article off topic. I recognized this in the Alzheimer's section. I believe you stayed on task with the information you were portraying and successfully wrote a well rounded article for wikipedia.

Overall, I believe the article was well done, however some changes can be made to better the article even further I believe. Good luck in any future changes you will be making for Elderspeak. Thank you. Ap14bq (talk) 01:01, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you Ap14bq for your feedback. The advantages section has been removed from our elderspeak page. Thanks again.Adams sam (talk) 02:01, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello, , , and ,

Overall, I think you all did a great job with your edits. Well done! I love the addition of a picture, and I think all of the information you have added is relevant and the topic was addressed in a broad, insightful manner. I also like the use of examples. It contributed to my understanding of the topic. There are only a few changes that I would suggest.

-To start, I think the article would be more effective if the paragraphs were split up. For example, in the “Non Medical” section, I would look at creating a new paragraph at the sentence “Elderspeak is affected by context.” This way, the ideas you have are split up and it is easier to take in the information. Try and do this throughout the article.

-As I mentioned above, I really liked the addition of a photo to the article. I would just look at trying to make the caption more precise. Maybe state if the older adult has Alzheimer’s, or something along that line.

-I think that the article was well written and copyright laws were abided by, however I would just scan over your spelling and grammar to ensure that everything is perfect.

-The last thing I would look at revising is making sure that you maintain a neutral viewpoint throughout the whole article. For example, saying that the “biggest problem in elderspeak is…” is expressing an opinion. Try to add change the wording, and only use bold statements such as the one in my example when you have a source to back that up.

Once again, you all did a wonderful job. Congratulations! If you have any suggestions about my suggestions, I am more than happy to discuss it. Ek13ld (talk) 00:39, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi guys, I've also been assigned to give feedback on this page! I think you guys did a great job on the edits! The page looks great and it is an easy read. While reading it, I noticed that there were a few things that could potentially be done to help make the page better. I hope that my feedback was helpful to you guys! Good luck! --Kb14ie (talk) 03:58, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) In the last sentence of the very first paragraph, it is pointed out that in some cases, elderly talk is beneficial in some cases. I think that maybe you could elaborate and give examples of when it is beneficial!
 * 2) It may be a bit difficult to do, but there could be a better balance between the advantages and disadvantages.
 * 3) I also think it would be beneficial to give some ideas on the effects of elderspeak whether positive or negative on the patient.


 * Thank you Kb14ie for your feedback, our group has come the conclusion that there isn't any advantages to elderspeak and we have removed this section. Adams sam (talk) 16:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Explanation and Copies of Edits
This is the original version:

Use of Elderspeak
Elderspeak is used in many different contexts by young people when talking to older persons. Research by Susan Kemper demonstrated that both service providers (volunteers) and professional caregivers alike engaged in elderspeak when interacting with the elderly. Furthermore, elderspeak was used regardless of the communicative ability of the older person. It was used when interacting with older adults who were healthy and active community members, as well as those in institutional settings. Surprisingly, caregivers used patronizing speech both when addressing adults with dementia (and reduced communication abilities), as well as those without dementia which demonstrates that age cues are more salient to speakers than mental or physical health cues, and cues about communicative ability. Generally, young adults use an overstated version of elderspeak when addressing impaired older persons. When older adults converse with older people with cognitive impairments, they make speech accommodations to a lesser extent than young people. They speak more slowly and incorporate more pauses, however they do not use more repetition as young people do. It is possible that older speakers may not accommodate their speech as much in order to avoid seeming patronizing.

Use of Elderspeak
Elderspeak is used in many different contexts by young people when talking to older persons. Research by Susan Kemper demonstrated that both service providers (volunteers) and professional caregivers alike engaged in elderspeak when interacting with the elderly. Furthermore, elderspeak was used regardless of the communicative ability of the older person. It was used when interacting with older adults who were healthy and active community members, as well as those in institutional settings. Surprisingly, caregivers used patronizing speech both when addressing adults with dementia (and reduced communication abilities), as well as those without dementia which demonstrates that age cues are more salient to speakers than mental or physical health cues, and cues about communicative ability. Generally, young adults use an overstated version of elderspeak when addressing impaired older persons. When older adults converse with older people with cognitive impairments, they make speech accommodations to a lesser extent than young people. They speak more slowly and incorporate more pauses, however they do not use more repetition as young people do. The use of elderspeak in more “warmth”  and lower in a “superiority” dimension when the speaker was a family member and/or friend compared to an unfamiliar. It is possible that older speakers may not accommodate their speech as much in order to avoid seeming patronizing.

Alzheimer's
“The main task for a person with Alzheimer’s is to maintain a sense of self or personhood,” Dr. Williams said. “If you know you’re losing your cognitive abilities and trying to maintain your personhood, and someone talks to you like a baby, it’s upsetting to you.” (Leland, 2008) Caretakers of adults with Alzheimer’s are often told to speak to their patients more slowly, although slow speech has not been proven to improve comprehension in patients with Alzheimer’s.

Disadvantages Explanation of Edits
These are the changes that have been made

Disadvantages

The biggest problem with elderspeak is the effect it has on older adults and how they are perceived, both by younger adults and by themselves. Older adults often find elderspeak patronizing and disrespectful. Elderspeak is based on stereotypes because of the way younger adults speak to older adults as if they are less competent, older adults find fewer opportunities to communicate effectively and may experiences declines in self-esteem, depression, assumption of dependent behaviour consistent with their stereotypes of elderly individuals. they can even become less interested in social interaction. This cycle of communication is often referred to as the “communication predicament of aging”. Adults receiving elderspeak are often judged by the speaker as being not only less competent, but also being in a worse disposition. Interestingly, the same study showed that when using elderspeak, the speaker was judged as having a worse disposition as well. Early social scientists first identified elderspeak and estimated that 20% of the communication occurring in nursing homes is actually elderspeak (Caporael, 1981). Caretakers of nursing home residents must be particularly careful when using elderspeak. Although elderspeak has been shown to help older adults with dementia and Alzheimer’s in language comprehension, they are not immune to feeling disrespected when it is used. Resisting care is an ongoing problem with dementia patients, and residents of nursing homes are more likely to resist care when their nurse uses elderspeak. Care givers may assume that the elder prefers the nurturing of elderspeak but older adults think of it as demeaning. Older adults in both institutional settings and those receiving home care services report as many as 40% of their caregivers use Speech they perceive as demeaning. and 75% of the interactions that elderly people have are with the staff of the nursing homes. Another problem with elderspeak is that licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, and other healthcare team professionals have very seldom training and expertise when it comes to communication with elders. and that elderpseak is often used incorrectly. For example, caretakers of adults with Alzheimer’s are often told to speak to their patients more slowly, although slow speech has not been proven to improve comprehension in patients with Alzheimer’s. shorter sentences appear to have a beneficial effect on older adults’ communication, factors of elderspeak such as slow speech and exaggerated pitch tend to make older adults feel worse about their own competency, as well as the competency of the speaker; however, younger adults continue to use elderspeak with these characteristics.

Alzheimer's
With in our group we had discussed adding an Alzheimer's section because we feel that Elderspeak is related to Alzheimer's. “The main task for a person with Alzheimer’s is to maintain a sense of self or personhood,” Dr. Williams said. “If you know you’re losing your cognitive abilities and trying to maintain your personhood, and someone talks to you like a baby, it’s upsetting to you.” (Leland, 2008) Caretakers of adults with Alzheimer’s are often told to speak to their patients more slowly, although slow speech has not been proven to improve comprehension in patients with Alzheimer’s.

Adams sam (talk) 19:03, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

edits done by dg14pv
Hey everyone! So I started off by rearranging some of the information that was in the article. There was a lot of information in the disadvantages section so I split it up into paragraphs. I took the Alzheimer's heading, and made it a sub heading of the uses of elderspeak, and then made a non medical sub heading. Then I added the following information to the sub heading of non-medical:
 * Elderspeak is also commonly used in the general community, not only in the context of health care. In the workplace elderspeak is quite prevalent. Elderly persons usually receive mistreatment from those that they trust or depend on, or who depend on them, in the workplace these people could be managerial, supervisory, and peer staff. Severe forms of elderspeak contribute to discrimination in the workplace, potentially infringing on the basic human right of that individual to a safe work environment. Elderspeak is affected by context. Community or institute, meaning that people use elderspeak towards elderly people in the community, like in the grocery store or the coffee shop, or in an institute such as a nursing home. An element of context is the relationship between the speaker and the elderly person, people in closer relationships will be more likely to know the cognitive function of the individual, acquaintances or strangers would be less likely to make accurate judgements of this. 

Then I added some information about non verbal communication under the heading of Uses of Elderspeak, as follows
 * Research shows that approximately 80% of communication is non verbal. Elderspeak involves communicating to the older adult in a codling way, which includes non verbal cues and gestures. An example would be looming over a wheelchair or bed in dominancy, or a pat on the buttocks resembling parent-child touching. 

The next thing I did was introduce the idea of Agism to the article, making sure to highlight it as a linked page that someone could visit.
 * This speech style is often patronizing in nature and resembles baby talk, which refers to how adults address babies and young children. It results from reliance on stereotypes about cognitive abilities of older persons. The use of elderspeak may be a result of or contribute to agism, a form of discrimination based on age differences.  Young people tend to believe that aging is associated with cognitive declines, including declines in language processing and production.

I then went in and added a couple ideas to the definition in the beginning.
 * Elderspeak also includes using terms that are overly endearing, asking closed questions that prompt an answer, and using the collective “we”. 

Lastly, I went through and tried to make some things in the article more well written. I reworked the order of some sentences in the first paragraph, and changed some phrasing and grammatical things that I thought could be improved. Changed the phrase more simple to simpler, getting rid of the word and in lists. rearranged the order of some information.
 * I hope this was helpful in understanding how I tried to help with this wikipedia article, thank you everyone for feedback! Dg14pv 19:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC) Dg14pv (talk)

adams_sam final edits
User:Dg14pv/sandboxelderspeakgroup This is a link to our group’s sandbox so that anyone can see the contribution our group has made Adams sam (talk) 22:36, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Try to avoid large copy/pastes to the talk page
Hi all. Could I encourage you not to paste large sections of the article on this talk page? It makes it quite difficult to read! If you're making changes and want to discuss them first (which is great) I suggest using a sandbox page in your own user space and link to it from here.

The other option, of course, is to be WP:BOLD and make the changes! If there's disagreement, you can still be open to discussing it here. Basie (talk) 03:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you Basie. I am the student's professor. please edit the copy/pastes to instead provide other editors with a summary of the changes you made and your rationale. A link to your sandbox talk page would be helpful. --LynnMcCleary (talk) 23:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Brock University: feedback
First of all, hi and welcome to Wikipedia!

This can be a confusing place (trust me, I'm relatively inexperienced myself and there is a bewildering variety of guidelines to absorb and follow!) I've covered some broad areas below that I think are worth considering with regard to your project work.

Format
Section headings should mostly be lower-case with an initial capital, unless they contain proper nouns/names. For example, Non-medical rather than Non Medical. The relevant guideline is WP:SECTIONCAPS. Sometimes it looks a bit odd when you're used to reading book and article titles that use a different convention. The main idea is consistency and ease of reading.


 * Thank you Basie this will be corrected.

Don't be afraid to wikilink key words to other Wikipedia articles (but you'll usually only need to link the first occurrence of the term). Just off the top of my head I'd suggest cognition, dementia, nurse, licensed practical nurse, registered nurse, and I'm sure many others.

Not to put too fine a point on it: your contributions are crying out for paragraph breaks! Solid blocks of text are hard to read, especially on the web. I highly recommend you let the content you put so much work into breath a little!

Neutral point of view
Sometimes it's hard to distance yourself from the content you're adding. Statements like, "Elderspeak is actually offensive but nursing home residents are no longer offended by these speech patterns because they have claimed it as a normal habit."are probably correct for most people, but here you are very definitely expressing an opinion. Compare with the following:"Some nursing home residents report finding elderspeak offensive, but others may no longer be offended because they have become accustomed to being addressed in this way."but only do this if you have a reliable source to back it up.

Don't be daunted
You guys, be encouraged by your first experience here. You did a lot of things right. Most importantly, you engaged the community to help you improve the article. There's a saying among employers: "Hire for fit, train for skill." In other words, attitude, patience, and the ability to cooperate and take feedback are far more important than whether or not your first edits were a work of art!

I'll leave this page on my watchlist, so feel free to ask for help if you need it. Cheers, Basie (talk) 04:23, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Advantages of Elderspeak?
There has been good work on enhancing this article.

I wonder about the credibility of evidence for claims that Elderspeak has advantages. The example of hearing loss at high frequency in some older adults does not seem to justify Elderspeak. Other approaches are recommended (see Presbycusis). The cited finding that there may be interruptions to ask for clarification does not seem to be an advantage of Elderspeak - maybe previous editors intended to say that this might be a cause of the younger person reverting to Elderspeak? Similarly, there is evidence that Elderspeak is harmful when providing care for persons with Dementia (e.g., Williams et al. (2009, Elderspeak Communication: Impact on Dementia, Am J Alzheimers Dis Other Dementia, 24(1) 11-20, doi: 10.1177/1533317508318472). Perhaps the specific times when Elderspeak might be useful could be clarified and balance about different findings included. --LynnMcCleary (talk) 00:38, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Professor feedback on student edits
, congratulations on reaching this milestone on your assignment. I particularly appreciate the additional explanation of what Elderspeak is and the problems associated with it. You have comprehensive feedback from editors that you can use to further enhance the article and clarify your edits. Some of the feedback may not be about parts of the article that you worked on (it may have been difficult for other editors to figure out exactly what you changed) but you should feel free to use the results of your research to make any suggested changes. I'm looking forward to reading this after your final edits. LynnMcCleary (talk) 03:58, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Taking out advantages?
I was talking to Lynn and we had discussed that there are actually no advantages to elderspeak. Basie has also brought to our attention that Kemper & Lyons (1997) in the advantages doesn’t support our claim, I know we didn't focus on the advantage part when doing our editing so I just wanted to know what you guys thought about taking the advantages out all together? If we decide as a group we want to keep the advantages I strongly think that Kemper & Lyons (1997) should at least be removed. What are your guys thoughts on this?Adams sam (talk) 22:36, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah let's remove it. There's really no evidence and it won't really affect our neutrality. Dg14pv 03:05, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Referencing problems
I tagged this article with Refimprove not because there are widespread problems with a lack of referencing, but because some of the inline are not resolveable. They are using APA-like style (appearing in the "Notes" section) with sparse detail that presumably would refer to a complete bibliographic entry in the "References" section, but there are some Notes that do not appear to have an associated References entry and/or some Notes are missing sufficient data to figure it out. DMacks (talk) 18:54, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Prescriptive linguistics overhang
I came upon this page from a linguistics frame, and it immediately triggered my "prescriptive linguistics" button, in which the aberrant linguistic behaviour is known beforehand to be A Bad Thing. Especially before mere description.

As far as the inappropriate use of elderspeak goes (which seems to be the assumed focus of this article) the game theory matrix is not simple.

Come in with guns blazing, making few or no allowances for degraded language ability, and you can easily wind up in one of two unfortunate outcome boxes: the elder person pretending to understand more than he/she does, so as not to draw attention to their deficit, or forcing the person to explicitly blurt out "hey, I've lost a cognitive step!" when it might otherwise have been avoidable.

If you come in low and slow, the corrective requests are then cast in a positive mode: "hey, you idiot, I've still got it". Which side is the less painful error?

Coming in with perfect calibration is no easy matter, either, as many elderly people deliberately wrap themselves in an ambiguous haze of selective/defective hearing; it's not that unusual at any age in life for a person to feel that selective hearing is his/her last remaining mode of social empowerment.

In many care-giving situations, you're operating in a context of resentful consent. The Sopranos covered this at length with Livia and her car keys (I think Tony ultimately has a sex scene with a one-legged "thieving" Russian caregiver); and quite a bit more in the dynamic between Bobby Baccalieri and uncle June. This article is so busy tiptoeing around it's proscriptive bent, that it seems to me to be falling far short of addressing the true complexity here. &mdash; MaxEnt 00:19, 9 January 2017 (UTC)