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Children and movement

Filming children who participated for Motionary demonstrated another fascinating aspect of my motion and interaction studies. I filmed five children: three, six, nine, ten, and twelve years old. I noticed right away that children utilized a great variety of movements. Kids crawled, pretended to fly, jumped, made stars. I gave them simple or simply defined words from Motionary to perform. It was amusing to see that their performance of "zoo" was almost the same as "ubiquitous". When standing alone in front of a camera a child looked nervous and self-conscious. The same child in a group with other children would forget about everything and concentrate on interacting with others. When moving and interacting with each other, children looked more carefree, cheerful and more relaxed than the adults. The nine-year-old actor used the same gesture and facial expressions to express anger or concern as the adult actors did. Was this part of inborn gesture or can children mimic adults and even by age of nine recognize and replay certain meanings with their own body language? Mimicking was obvious in interaction between kids, especially when younger children tried to copy the older ones.