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?
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DOI：
10.1098/rstb.2012.0409
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发表时间：
2013-11-19
影响因子：
6.3
通讯作者：
Beck, Sarah R.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Chappell, Jackie;Cutting, Nicola;Beck, Sarah R.
我们知道，即使是年幼的孩子也是熟练的工具使用者，但直到最近，人们对他们如何制作工具知之甚少。在这里，我们将探讨工具制造的基本概念，以及儿童制造新工具所需的信息和假定的认知能力。我们将从比较文献中回顾新工具制造的证据，并提出越来越多的儿童数据，表明通过制造工具来解决问题的创新是一项比以前想象的更具挑战性的任务。儿童在这类任务中的困难似乎不能用未修改工具的坚持、难以切换到替代策略、任务语用学或许可问题来解释。相反，制作新的工具（在任务的背景下没有看到所需工具的例子）似乎很难，因为它是一个“结构不良问题”的例子。在这种类型的不良结构问题中，起始条件和最终目标是已知的，但从一个到另一个所需的转换和/或动作没有指定。我们将讨论这些发现对理解人类和其他动物解决问题的发展的影响。
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.