Kemper, S., & Harden, T. (1999). Experimentally disentangling what's beneficial about elderspeak from what's not. Psychology and Aging, 14(4), 656-670.

Kemper, S.; Harden,T.

1999

Kemper, S., & Harden, T. (1999). Experimentally disentangling what's beneficial about elderspeak from what's not. Psychology and Aging, 14(4), 656-670.

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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.

This second experimental study clarified the findings of experiment 1 and prior referential communication studies comparing young and older adults' speech accommodations. It appears that older adults are indeed sensitive to variations in syntactic complexity and prosody. Prosody not only affected the older adults' ratings of their own communicative competence but also impacted their actual performance. When the speaker used exaggerated prosody, older adults reported experiencing more communication problems, and their actual performance on the referential communication task was impaired slightly by the use of exaggerated prosody. Syntactic complexity affected both their actual performance as well as their ratings of communicative competence.

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