Making tools isn’t child’s play

Beck, Sarah R.; Apperly, Ian A.; Chappell, Jackie; Guthrie, Carlie; Cutting, Nicola

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2011.01.003

Cited by 160 publications

(245 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

214

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We know that 3-5 year olds very rarely make a functional tool before demonstration, and even at 7 years old, fewer than half succeed [23]. The majority of children do not succeed without a demonstration of the solution before about 8 years old.…”

Section: Review Of Tool Innovation and Performance (A) Tool Use Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The majority of children do not succeed without a demonstration of the solution before about 8 years old. However, even the younger children (4 years old) choose a functional over a non-functional tool (in this case, a hook over a straight pipe cleaner), so they appear to understand which tool is required when they choose between pre-made tools and do not have to make one ( [23], Experiment 1). Furthermore, as nearly all children succeeded in making a hook once they had received a demonstration, we know that they have sufficient dexterity to make a hook and use it skilfully enough to retrieve the reward.…”

Section: Review Of Tool Innovation and Performance (A) Tool Use Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There may have been problems with the task pragmatics in Beck and colleagues' experiments [23], because children may not have understood that they had permission to manipulate and transform the materials provided. Alternatively, the prompt from the experimenter that the materials 'can help' to retrieve the sticker might have been interpreted to mean that the materials could be used successfully unmodified.…”

Section: (I) Understanding the Relevant Features Of The Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If the individual faces a task in which they must make a tool to solve it, but they have not seen an example of the required tool (e.g. [7,23]), they must determine for themselves an appropriate toolshape, and then work out how to transform the available materials into this shape. We refer to this class of problems as 'tool innovation', because the solution-as well as the required transformation-must be invented by the tool user.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The development of tool manufacture in humans: what helps young children make innovative tools?

Chappell

Cutting

Apperly

et al. 2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We know that even young children are proficient tool users, but until recently, little was known about how they make tools. Here, we will explore the concepts underlying tool making, and the kinds of information and putative cognitive abilities required for children to manufacture novel tools. We will review the evidence for novel tool manufacture from the comparative literature and present a growing body of data from children suggesting that innovation of the solution to a problem by making a tool is a much more challenging task than previously thought. Children's difficulty with these kinds of tasks does not seem to be explained by perseveration with unmodified tools, difficulty with switching to alternative strategies, task pragmatics or issues with permission. Rather, making novel tools (without having seen an example of the required tool within the context of the task) appears to be hard, because it is an example of an ‘ill-structured problem’. In this type of ill-structured problem, the starting conditions and end goal are known, but the transformations and/or actions required to get from one to the other are not specified. We will discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the development of problem-solving in humans and other animals.

show abstract

Section: Review Of Tool Innovation and Performance (A) Tool Use Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Review Of Tool Innovation and Performance (A) Tool Use Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (I) Understanding the Relevant Features Of The Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The development of tool manufacture in humans: what helps young children make innovative tools?

Chappell

Cutting

Apperly

et al. 2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Reasons to predict the opposite, a lack of evidence for cumulative culture, include young children's remarkably unimaginative problem solving requiring innovative tool use [51,54,57], as when even six-year-olds fail to appreciate that a pipe-cleaner can be bent to make a useful hook tool (whereas they will promptly do this once they see it demonstrated) [51]. Similar limitations have been documented in using water to gain a floating prize [58], or a loop of cord to rake an object closer [13].…”

Section: Overview and Rationale Of The Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation and social transmission in experimental micro-societies: exploring the scope of cumulative culture in young children

McGuigan

Burdett

Burgess

et al. 2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a.whiten@st-andrews.ac.uk 2 The experimental study of cumulative culture and the innovations essential to it is a young science, with child studies so rare that the scope of cumulative cultural capacities in childhood remains largely unknown. Here we report a new experimental approach to the inherent complexity of these phenomena. Groups of 3-4 year old children were presented with an elaborate array of challenges affording the potential cumulative development of a variety of techniques to gain increasingly attractive rewards. In contrast to a prior study, we found evidence for elementary forms of cumulative cultural progress, with inventions of solutions at lower levels spreading to become shared innovations, and some children then building on these to create more advanced but more rewarding innovations. This contrasted with markedly more constrained progress

show abstract

Motor Development

Adolph

Robinson

2015

Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science

127

123

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This chapter provides a synthesis of recent research in motor development. Motor behavior encompasses everything that we do, and therefore is relevant to every branch of psychological science. Our aim is to address central concepts and methodological issues that continue to challenge developmental scientists, and to show how the study of motor behavior can yield fresh insights into the process of development. The chapter is organized into three broad themes that are emblematic of the state of current work on motor development: (1) movements are embodied, and are thus the product of a physical body acting in the real world; (2) behavior is embedded within a physical environment rich with sensory information, and requiring perception for effective action; (3) motor development is enculturated, shaped by cultural practices from caregiving to social norms. We illustrate 10 general developmental concepts within these broad themes using examples drawn from research on humans and animals, with an emphasis on early development, from prenatal through childhood.

show abstract

Making tools isn’t child’s play

Cited by 160 publications

References 15 publications

The development of tool manufacture in humans: what helps young children make innovative tools?

The development of tool manufacture in humans: what helps young children make innovative tools?

Innovation and social transmission in experimental micro-societies: exploring the scope of cumulative culture in young children

Motor Development

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About