Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Raising hands is an important behavior in a classroom because children get a chance to participate in the class by doingit, and teachers use it to monitor how well children have understood the lesson. However, little is known about thehand raising behavior in a classroom. Thus, we examined to see if hand raising behavior varies with childrens age in anelementary school. Children in the first, third and fifth grades participated in this study. We recoded the teachers andchildrens behaviors and speech observed in Japanese language class and analyzed their interactions. The results showedthat fifth graders frequently raised their hands, while third graders raised them the least. The incidence of hand raisingduring anothers speech was also higher in fifth graders. This suggests that with age, children learn to use teacher and otherchildrens speech and non-verbal behavior as a resource to participate in a class.