Sotaro Kita

is a Japanese psycholinguist. He is a professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Warwick. His work focuses on the psycholinguistic properties of gestures accompanying speech, relations between spatial language and cognition, language development, and sound symbolism.

Education and career Kita received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1993, working in the lab of David McNeill. His dissertation focused on spontaneous gestures and Japanese mimetics. From 1993 to 2003, Kita led the Gesture Project at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, one of the research foci of the MPI.

From 2017 to 2023, Kita has served as the editor of GESTURE (published by John Benjamins). Kita was president of the International Society for Gesture Studies from 2012 to 2014, and vice-president from 2010 to 2012.

Kita's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and other agencies.

Appointments 1993-2003 Led the Gesture Project at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics 1993-1994 Postdoctoral Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics 1994-2003 Senior Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics 2003-2006 Senior Lecturer at the Dept. of Experimental Psychology in the University of Bristol 2006-2013 Reader at the School of Psychology in the University of Birmingham 2013–present Professor of Psychology of Language at University of Warwick

Books Kita, S. (2002). Jesuchaa: kangaeru karada [Gesture: the body that thinks]. Kaneko Shobo. Kita, S. (Ed.) (2003). Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet. Psychology Press

Selected publications