Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Speakers sometimes modify their gestures during the processof production into adaptors such as hair touching or eyescratching. Such disguised adaptors are evidence that thespeaker can monitor their gestures. In this study, weinvestigated when and how disguised adaptors are firstproduced by children. Sixty elementary school childrenparticipated in this study. There were ten from each schoolyear (from 7 to 12 years of age). They were instructed toremember a cartoon and retell its story to their parents. Theresults showed that children did not produce disguisedadaptors until the age of 8. The disguised adaptorsaccompany fluent speech until the children are 10 years oldand accompany dysfluent speech until they reach 11 or 12years of age. These results suggest that children start tomonitor their gestures when they are 9 or 10 years old.Cultural influences and cognitive changes were considered asfactors to influence emergence of disguised adaptors.