Elderspeak: Impact on Dementia Care

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究的目的是探讨长期护理的痴呆症患者在护理人员使用老年人语言时的反应。老年人语言是一种类似于婴儿语的语言，已知对认知完好的老年人有负面影响。老年人话的特点是词汇简单，句子简短，语速慢，音调和音量升高，以及不恰当的亲密参考，被长期护理机构的护理人员广泛使用。研究表明，认知完整的老年人认为老年人的话是居高高下的，老年人的话会导致工作人员与住院医生互动中的沟通中断，并导致诸如对护理的抗拒等问题行为。对护理的抗拒（如退缩、攻击、徘徊）扰乱护理活动，增加提供护理的时间和压力。指导本研究的基于需求的痴呆症妥协行为模型确定沟通是痴呆症护理中问题行为的一个因素。然而，目前还没有研究确定老年人的语言交流，特别是对老年痴呆症患者的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this study is to explore how long term care residents with dementia respond when nursing staff use elderspeak, a type of speech similar to babytalk, which has known negative effects on cognitively intact older adults. Elderspeak features simplistic vocabulary, short sentences, slow speech, elevated pitch and volume, and inappropriately intimate references and is extensively used by nursing staff in long-term care settings. Research has shown that cognitively intact older adults perceive elderspeak as patronizing and that elderspeak can precipitate communication breakdown in staff-resident interactions and contribute to problem behaviors such as resistiveness to nursing care. Resistiveness to care (e.g. withdrawal, aggression, wandering) disrupts care activities and increases the time and stress of providing nursing care. The Need-Based Dementia-Compromised Behavior Model that guides this study identifies communication as a factor in problem behaviors in dementia care. However, no research has been found that determines how elderspeak communication, specifically, affects older adults with dementia. The specific aims of the proposed study are to determine the impact of nursing staff use of elderspeak on resident behavior during activities of daily care. This study proposes an exploratory design that uses psycholinguistic analysis to examine relationships between nursing staff use of elderspeak and resistive behaviors of care recipients with dementia. Experimental methods include the collection and analysis of video recordings of nursing staff and resident interactions during activities of daily living in long term care settings. Interactions between nursing staff-care recipient dyads lasting from 1-10 minutes (N=60) will be coded for resistiveness to care and elderspeak markers using valid and reliable measures. Resistiveness to care scores will be regresses on frequencies of elderspeak. Coding of the sequence of staff elderspeak and subsequent resident resistive behaviors will be reported to describe temporal relationships.