Spontaneous categorization of tools based on observation in children and chimpanzees
Spontaneous categorization of tools based on observation in children and chimpanzees
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根据对儿童和黑猩猩的观察对工具进行自发分类
DOI：
10.1038/s41598-019-54345-1
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发表时间：
2019
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Ikuma Adachi & Dora Biro
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Thibaud Gruber;Aurelien Frick;Satoshi Hirata;Ikuma Adachi & Dora Biro
从发展和比较的角度来看，“工具”概念的获取仍然很有趣。我们目前的儿童工具使用发展模型是基于人类采取目的论立场的独特能力：理解演示者在使用工具时基于目标的意图。然而，目前尚不清楚儿童和黑猩猩（我们的近亲）如何将他们对不同物体的知识结合起来，这些物体的功能是作用于环境的其他部分，并将它们分配给单一类别的“工具”。在这里，我们使用基于函数的方法来解决这个问题。我们让 7 至 11 岁的儿童和成年黑猩猩接受功能匹配 (MTF) 任务，以探讨在实验者演示工具和非工具的功能后，它们是否会分别对工具和非工具进行分类。 MTF 是样本匹配的变体，其中样本和目标来自同一类别/种类而不是相同。大约 40% 的儿童根据 MTF 任务中的功能将物体配对，只有一名 8 岁以下的孩子这样做。此外，当口头提问时，这些孩子会提供基于功能的答案来解释他们的选择。六只黑猩猩中的一只也成功地根据功能将物体配对。因此，儿童和至少一只黑猩猩可以根据观察演示者自发地将工具分类为功能类别。一只黑猩猩在我们任务中的成功表明，目的论推理可能已经存在于我们最后的共同祖先中，但也表明人类儿童更容易以自发的方式概念化工具。
The acquisition of the concept of ‘tool’ remains intriguing from both developmental and comparative perspectives. Our current model of tool use development in children is based on humans’ supposedly unique ability to adopt a teleological stance: the understanding of a demonstrator’s goal-based intentions when using a tool. It is however unclear how children and chimpanzees, our closest relatives, combine their knowledge of different objects whose function is to act on other parts of the environment, and assign them to a single category of ‘tools’. Here, we used a function-based approach to address this question. We exposed 7 to 11-year-old children and adult chimpanzees to a Matching-to-Function (MTF) task to explore whether they would sort tools and non-tools separately after demonstration of their function by an experimenter. MTF is a variant of Matching-to-Sample where the sample and the target are from the same category/kind rather than identical. Around 40% of children paired objects according to their function in the MTF task, with only one child younger than 8 years doing so. Moreover, when verbally questioned, these children offered a function-based answer to explain their choices. One of six chimpanzees also successfully paired objects according to function. Children and at least one chimpanzee can thus spontaneously sort tools into functional categories based on observing a demonstrator. The success of a single chimpanzee in our task suggests that teleological reasoning might already have been present in our last common ancestor but also shows that human children more readily conceptualize tools in a spontaneous fashion.