Why Kids are Easier to Read
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 child telling a lie
The act of covering the mouth can alert a parent to the lie and this mouth-covering gesture will likely continue throughout
The Definitive Book of Body Language
the person's lifetime, usually only varying in the speed at which it's done. When a teenager tells a lie, the hand is brought to the mouth in a 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 teenager telling a lie
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 nose touch gesture results. This is simply an adult's version of the mouth-covering gesture that was used in childhood.
Bill Clinton answering questions about Monica Lewinsky in front of the Grand Jury
Understanding the Basics
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 gestures of a fifty-year-old than those of a five-year-old.
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