The Mouth-Covering Gesture

Older people are harder to read than younger ones because they have less muscle tone in the face.

The speed of some gestures and how obvious they look to others is also related to the age of the individual. For example, if a five-year-old child tells a lie, he's likely to immediately cover his mouth with one or both hands.

THe act of covering the mouth can alert a parent to the lie and this Mouth-Covering gesture will likely continue thoughout the person's lifetime, usually only warying in the speed at which it's done.

When a teenager tells a lie, the hand is brought to the mouth in similar way to the five-year-old, but instead of the obvious hand-slapping gesture over the mouth, the fingers rub lightly around it.

The original Mouth-Covering gesture becomes even faster in adulthood. When an adult tells a lie, it's as if his brain instructs his hand to cover his mouth in an attempt to block the deceitful words, just as it did for the five-year-old and the teenager. But, at the last moment, the hand is pulled away from the face and a Node-Touch gesture Results. THis is simply an adult's version of the Mouth-Covering gesture that was used in childhood.

This shows how, as people get older, their gestures become more subtle and less obvious and is why it's often more difficult to read the getures of a fifty-years old than those of a five-year-old.

from: The Definitive Book of Body Language, Allan & Barbara Pease