Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

People make different kinds of gestures that may vary in their functions. For example, representational gestures can help communication. However, not all gestures promote mutual understanding, such as self-adaptors (touching one’s face; twirling a strand of hair), which are perceived as having anxious behaviours. Nicoladis et al. (2022) propose a positive relationship between adaptors and representational gestures. Our study examined forty-six future broadcasters’ production of self-adaptors and representational gestures in adult and child-directed programmes. We also investigated the relationship between adaptors and representational gestures as a function of broadcasting contexts. Results showed that broadcasters produced more representational but fewer self-adaptors in the child-directed programme. Participants’ self-adaptors negatively related to representational gestures when broadcasting in the adult-directed programme. Moreover, there is a stable individual trend in one’s self-adaptor strategy across programme contexts. In conclusion, speakers’ self-adaptor production can be shaped by individual differences and contextual requirements.