NURSING HOME RESIDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF RULES WHICH REGULATE SPOKEN COMMUNICATION.
Contributors: University of Denver.
Published: 1988
Number of pages: 257
Subjects: Speech Communication.
Description: Nursing home residents do not talk very much with other residents in the nursing home. A decline in spoken communication may interfere with the functions of human communication which: (1) links individuals with their environment, (2) allows for the development of higher mental processes, and (3) regulates behavior (Dance & Larson, 1976). The purpose of this study was to describe elderly nursing home residents' perceptions of communication rules which regulate their talking behaviors with other residents with specific focus on rules that inhibit or prohibit human communication.

A role play was used to interview seventy-two elderly nursing home residents in eight nursing homes in Denver, Colorado. A content analysis was performed on actual residents statements about their perceptions of rules in the nursing home.

The most significant and unique finding in this study is that residents do not shed or disregard self regulatory conventions or unstated rules they use to regulate their talking behavior when they assume the new role of nursing home resident. Elderly nursing home residents isolate themselves from talking with many of the residents in the nursing home.

In addition, elderly nursing home residents' talking behavior is regulated by others or rules in the nursing home that inhibit spoken communication among residents. Residents perceive that they are not supposed: (1) to complain or criticize the nursing home, (2) to talk with the opposite sex and if they do they are supposed to keep the conversation short and formal, (3) to talk about loneliness, dying, and illness, and (4) to talk too much. All of these perceptions of rules regulate and inhibit spoken communication among nursing home residents.

Elderly nursing home residents are faced with managing spoken communication barriers that accompany the natural aging process, communication barriers that occurs when they are segregated in nursing homes, and communication barriers that are the product of using self regulating conventions in a restricted communication environment, the nursing home. All of these barriers to residents' spoken communication in the nursing home interfere with the functions of human communication and potentially magnify the deleterious effects of isolation and accelerate desocialization.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-11, Section: A, page: 3203.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF DENVER, 1988.

School code: 0061.