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Abstract Aim: The present study was conducted to clarify the type and frequency of verbal communication between caregivers and elderly residents in geriatric care facilities. The relationship of this verbal communication was studied in terms of the caregivers talking to elderly residents and the utterances issued by the elderly residents. The attributes of the elderly residents were also studied. Methods: There were 35 eldery residents living in three metropolitan geriatric care facilities. Observations were made of caregivers talking to elderly residents and of elderly residents talking to caregivers in order to conduct a content analysis that categorized the types of verbal communication observed. A statistical analysis of the relationship between the frequency and duration of verbal communication and attributes of the elderly residents was carried out. Results: There were two category types of talking to elderly residents by a caregiver: ‘talking to elicit the ‘activities of daily living (ADL)‐related behavior/performance or physical functioning’ (type I: instrumental communication) and ‘talking to facilitate psychosocial life activities’ (type II: affective communication), of which the former accounted for 75.9%. The number of spontaneous utterances from elderly residents was very low, with most utterances being responses to caregivers talking to them. There was a tendency for utterances from the elderly residents to increase as the total time of being talked to by caregiver increased ( r = 0.47, P < 0.01). The total amount of time a caregiver spent talking to elderly residents was longer for people with low versus high mobility and for people with dementia versus people without dementia ( t = 3.4, P < 0.01). Conclusion: The correlation between type II communication and the mean frequency of utterances by elderly residents was high ( r = 0.72, P < 0.01) compared with type I, suggesting that the former type of communication is more likely to elicit utterances by elderly residents.
Fukaya et al. (Tue,) studied this question.