In this essay I argue for a new wave of research on tool use development. Advances in the literature on perception-action development hold important clues for how tool use unfolds in children. These advances suggest that tool use may be a more continuous developmental achievement than has been previously believed. On this view, tool use is rooted in the perception-action routines that infants employ to gain information about their environments. Although tools alter the properties of effector systems, children use tools to explore and change their environments, building on efforts that originate in infancy. Based on this approach, new research directions are suggested, including efforts designed to investigate the processes by which children detect and relate affordances between objects, coordinate spatial frames of reference, and incorporate early-appearing action patterns into instrumental behaviors.

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Although a considerable amount is known about the development of object manipulation during the 1st year, less is known about how infants manually explore surfaces and relate objects to surfaces. To address these issues, 60 infants (20 each at 6, 8, and 10 months of age) were presented hard and soft objects on tabletop surfaces, which varied in terms of their material properties. Tabletop surfaces were either liquid, discontinuous, flexible, or rigid. Results indicated that infants explored the objects, surfaces, and their interactions selectively, tailoring their manual actions to the material properties of the objects or surfaces. In some instances, selectivity increased with age. The implications of these findings for understanding the origins of problem solving and tool use are considered.Over the course of the first year, infants acquire a rich and varied repertoire of actions for manipulating objects. Moreover, infants apply these actions selectively, tailoring a particular kind of movement to an object's unique physical properties. For instance, by the middle of the second half-year, infants finger textured objects more than nontextured ones, shake or bang sounding objects more than nonsounding ones and press pliable objects more than nonpliable ones (Bushnell & Boudreau, 1993;Gibson & Walker, 1984;Lockman & McHale, 1989;Molina & Jouen, 1998;Palmer, 1989; Ruff, 1984).Collectively, these types of achievements belie accounts of sensorimotor development that suggest that object manipulation is undifferentiated during much of the first year. According to such accounts, lack of specificity in infants' manual behaviors stems from a cognitive gap: Infants are not yet fully able to differentiate INFANCY, 8(3),[233][234][235][236][237][238][239][240][241][242][243][244][245][246][247][248][249][250][251][252]

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The current study examines the developmental trajectory of banging movements and its implications for tool use development. Twenty (6- to 15-month-old) infants wore reflective markers while banging a handled cube; movements were recorded at 240 Hz. Results indicated that through the second half-year, banging movements undergo developmental changes making them ideally suited for instrumental hammering and pounding. Younger infants were inefficient and variable when banging the object: their hands followed circuitous paths of great lengths at high velocities. By one year, infants showed consistent and efficient straight up-down hand trajectories of smaller magnitude and velocity, allowing for precise aiming and delivering dependable levels of force. The findings suggest that tool use develops gradually from infants’ existing manual behaviors.

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This study focuses on how the body schema develops during the first months of life, by investigating infants’ motor responses to localized vibrotactile stimulation on their limbs. Vibrotactile stimulation was provided by small buzzers that were attached to the infants’ four limbs one at a time. Four age groups were compared cross‐sectionally (3‐, 4‐, 5‐, and 6‐month‐olds). We show that before they actually reach for the buzzer, which, according to previous studies, occurs around 7–8 months of age, infants demonstrate emerging knowledge about their body's configuration by producing specific movement patterns associated with the stimulated body area. At 3 months, infants responded with an increase in general activity when the buzzer was placed on the body, independently of the vibrator's location. Differentiated topographical awareness of the body seemed to appear around 5 months, with specific responses resulting from stimulation of the hands emerging first, followed by the differentiation of movement patterns associated with the stimulation of the feet. Qualitative analyses revealed specific movement types reliably associated with each stimulated location by 6 months of age, possibly preparing infants’ ability to actually reach for the vibrating target. We discuss this result in relation to newborns’ ability to learn specific movement patterns through intersensory contingency. Statement of contribution what is already known on infants’ sensorimotor knowledge about their own bodies 3‐month‐olds readily learn to produce specific limb movements to obtain a desired effect (movement of a mobile).infants detect temporal and spatial correspondences between events involving their own body and visual events. what the present study adds until 4–5 months of age, infants mostly produce general motor responses to localized touch.this is because in the present study, infants could not rely on immediate contingent feedback.we propose a cephalocaudal developmental trend of topographic differentiation of body areas.