Yes or No: How children combine gestures and speech to express honest and deceiving attitude

This study looks into children’s use of head gestures to express their appreciation for ob-jects, comparing cases in which the gestures match or do not match their true attitude.Forty-four children aged 5 to 8 years old were asked to tell an experimenter whether ornot they would like to have shown objects as presents for their birthday. In a first round,children were not given any additional instructions, so that their feedback matched theirgenuine attitude towards the objects. In a second round, they were asked to give feed-back in a way that was the opposite of what they felt. Analyses of their verbal reactionsand response delays suggest that the youngest children found it harder to produce in-congruent feedback. While the relative use of head gestures decreases with age, childrenin all age groups produce more head gestures in the congruent condition, and producemore shaking gestures.