Secondary baby talk: Judgments by institutionalized elderly and their caregivers.

60 care receivers (aged 62–100 yrs) and 39 of their caregivers judged vocal nonverbal messages prepared from audiotapes of caregivers interacting with their co-workers and elderly nursing home residents. The relationship between these judgments and, respectively, the functional ability of the aged judges and the expectations of the elderly held by the caregivers were investigated. The stimulus tape judged consisted of 3 types of messages: caregivers' speech to care receivers in baby talk, caregivers' speech to care receivers not in baby talk, and speech to other caregivers assumed to be in normal adult speech. For the elderly judges, lower functional ability scores were associated with a greater liking for baby talk speech as compared to other speech, but no relationships were found for their judgments of "soothing" or "irritating." For caregivers, expectancy was associated with their predictions of residents' liking for baby talk speech and caregivers' endorsements that adult speech would not be effective for interacting with care receivers. Results suggest that variations in caregiver expectancy may operate through a common social stereotype of the elderly. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)