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Baby Talk Speech to the Elderly

Complexity and Content of Messages

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Linnda R. Caporael

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Previous research has documented the use of speech to institutionalized elderly adults that has the prosodic features (high and variable pitch) of baby talk speech and that communicates positive affect. This study investigated the complexity and verbal content of baby talk speech to the aged. Average sentence length was measured for speech to care receivers in baby talk (B T) and not in baby talk (NBT), and in speech between caregivers (CG). Additionally, judges sorted BT and NBT sentences into message categories. CG was found to be significantly longer than BT and NBT, with equivocal evidence for BT being shorter than NET, which were not reliably different. BT directed at the elderly appears to have co-occurring verbal and nonverbal communicative components, and the verbal content suggests that it may have some functional similarity to speech to children. NBT was hypothesized to be an "institutional"speech type related to the ecology of the nursing home.

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