The paralanguage of caregiving: baby talk to the institutionalized aged

A field study was conducted at a nursing home to (a) obtain descriptive information on the speech environment of the institutionalized elderly and (b) provide speech samples with which to conduct judgment studies on the paralinguistic features of caregiver communication. Three kinds of speech were differentiated: baby talk, speech to the elderly that was not in baby talk, and speech between caregivers, which was assumed to be normal adult speech. Over 22% of the sentences were reliably categorized as baby talk speech. Caregivers' ratings of the characteristics of the care receivers did not predict the amount of baby talk that was directed toward individual care receivers. In Judgment Study 1, content-filtered baby talk was identified as speech to children regardless of the actual status, adult or child, of the target. In Judgment Study 2, content-filtered speech samples were rated on four dimensions: comfort, pleasantness, irritation, and arousal. Baby talk was rated positive, adult speech received intermediate ratings, and non-baby-talk was rated negative. The findings suggest that baby talk is a speech register conveying affection, and it is proposed that non-baby-talk to the elderly is an "institutional" register denoting and promoting dependency.