Dr. Elena Nicoladis is the Department Head of the UBC Okanagan Department of Psychology. Her research interests include bilingual language learning, gesture use, cross-linguistic and/or cross-cultural similarities and differences in language learning and processing, thinking for speaking, and the relationship between language and thought. Her recent paper, Do gestures and props help communication with older adults about prescription medicine?, was published in the Cambridge University Press. We sat down with Elena to learn more her inspiration behind this research and its outcomes.
1. What inspired you to explore how gestures and props might help older adults understand prescription instructions, and what surprised you most about the results?
The first author of this paper, Emily Young, had a roommate who was training to be a pharmacist. The roommate told Emily that they were learning in their program to use props and gestures to explain how to use medication. Emily was also reading about how gestures can (and cannot) help communication. She had also read about research showing that sometimes people default to using “elderspeak” with older adults, as in speaking in a high pitch, using a lot of repetition and simple words. Unsurprisingly, older adults often find “elderspeak” to be demeaning and disrespectful. Emily was excited to put all this information together, hypothesizing that gestures and/or props can help older adults remember information about how to use a new medication. If so, then we would have found a respectful and effective way to communicate information about prescription drugs.
Most older adults in Canada take at least one prescription drug. We were very surprised to find that neither gestures nor props helped older adults remember information about how to take prescription medication. This was particularly surprising given previous research that has shown that gestures and props can help younger people remember information. One possible interpretation of these results is that incorporating gestures and/or props into our understanding requires working memory. As we age, our working memory capacity starts to decline. It is possible that older adults ignore the gestures and/or props so that they can better remember the spoken communication.
2. How could this research help improve real-world communication between health professionals and older adults?
It is important to remember that just because a technique or a strategy works with one population (e.g., gestures/props for younger people), it might not generalize to another population (e.g., older adults).
We are still in search of the most respectful and effective ways to communicate information to older adults. Our study has shown that it is unlikely that gestures and/or props are helpful. Future research can test the effectiveness of supplementing spoken information with written and/or video information that can be revisited.
3. You recently organized a conference exploring how language serves as both a tool for and a barrier to power. Do you think power dynamics, for example between doctors and patients, might affect how older adults respond to gestures or props?
That is decidedly possible! For example, it would be possible for healthcare providers to use gestures and/or props as if assuming that an older adult had cognitive deficits. Gesturing along with the word “drink” as if to show an older adult what ‘drinking’ meant could come across as disrespectful and/or demeaning. Over the long run, we hope to empower healthcare providers with respectful and effective means of communicating with all of their patients.