Abstract
To investigate how preschoolers acquire a tool use strategy and how they adapt their tool use to a changed situation, 2- to 4-year-olds were asked to retrieve chips from a transparent box with a rod, either by stabbing and lifting through a top opening or by pushing through a front and a back opening. In both conditions, about 40% of the children acquired effective tool use by individual learning, and 90% of the other children learned this by observing only one demonstration. When confronted with a changed situation (i.e., previous opening covered, alternative opening uncovered), children perseverated with the recently learned, but now ineffective tool use strategy. Neither age nor acquisition type of the first strategy affected preschoolers’ perseverations. Results indicate that prior tool use experiences have differential effects in situations that require either transferring known functions to novel objects or using a familiar tool for an alternative purpose.
References
2007). Learning about tools in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 43, 352–368.
(1996). Intention, history, and artifact concepts. Cognition, 60, 1–29.
(2005). Young children’s rapid learning about artifacts. Developmental Science, 8, 472–480.
(2007). Infants’ imitation of goal-directed actions: The role of movements and action effects. Acta Psychologica, 124, 44–59.
(2007). Social learning of artefact function in 12- and 15-month-olds. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 80–99.
(2008). Cultural transmission of tool use in young children: A diffusion chain study. Social Development, 17, 699–718.
(2003). The effect of prior practice on memory reactivation and generalization. Child Development, 74, 1615–1627.
(2011). The development of problem solving in young children: A critical cognitive skill. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 1–21.
(2000). A perception-action perspective on tool use development. Child Development, 71, 137–144.
(2008). Perseveration in tool use: A window for understanding the dynamics of the action-selection process. Infancy, 13, 249–269.
(2001). Learning from other people’s mistakes: Causal understanding in learning how to use a tool. Child Development, 72, 431–443.
(2001). Motor prediction. Current Biology, 11, R729–R732.
(2010). Beyond the information given: Infants’ transfer of actions learned through imitation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 106, 62–81.
(