Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Childhood Technical Skill Development

虽然儿童存在并对史前史做出了贡献，但许多关于人类进化的研究仍然集中在成人行为上。儿童的认知和身体能力与成年人不同，因此，研究人员可以期望在不同发展阶段的个体如何从事进化上重要的任务（如石器制造）中找到差异。人们普遍认为，石器制造在人类认知进化中发挥了作用，与规划、执行控制、工作记忆和语言等高阶大脑功能有关。实验考古学方法特别适合调查学习石器制作中与年龄相关的差异问题，因为它允许研究人员招募活体受试者，而不是分析考古遗迹，并研究不同年龄的参与者如何参与石器制作任务。在这里，重点不仅是工具本身，而且还在于参与者在制作工具时的行为以及什么样的过程和条件有助于有效学习技能。这种双重视角促进了对石器制造行为背景的深入了解，并可以为未来对人类经验至关重要的行为进化（如教学）的研究提供信息。 本博士论文项目旨在研究成人与儿童在石头敲（成型）技能习得方面的发展差异。使用实验考古学方法，45名成人和45名儿童参与者将接受Oldowan风格的“最少努力”薄片生产任务的培训，并使用剥落成功率和认知能力，体力和个性特征的个体差异进行比较。个体差异数据也将用于调查成人和儿童参与者成功获得技能的行为相关性的组内变化。解决一个未充分研究的人类起源的研究领域，该项目的结果将有影响的人类能力的累积文化的演变，并可能作为现有的考古组合，显示石器之间的技能差异的证据的参考点。此外，该项目将作为科学教育推广的一种形式，其设计的一部分是为参与研究的儿童提供以考古学为主题的夏令营。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Although children existed and contributed to prehistory, much of the research on human evolution still focuses on adult behavior. Children’s cognitive and physical abilities differ from those of adults, and therefore, researchers can expect to find variation in how individuals at different phases of development engage in evolutionarily important tasks such as stone toolmaking. Stone toolmaking is widely hypothesized to have played a role in human cognitive evolution, with ties to higher order brain functions such as planning, executive control, working memory, and language. Experimental archaeological methods are particularly well-positioned to investigate questions of age-related differences in learning stone toolmaking because it allows researchers to recruit living subjects, as opposed to analyzing archaeological remains, and examine how participants of different ages engage in a stone toolmaking task. Here, the focus is not just on the tools, themselves, but also on participants’ behavior in making the tools and what sort of processes and conditions contribute to effective learning of the skill. This dual perspective promotes insight into the behavioral context surrounding stone toolmaking and can inform future research on the evolution of behaviors, such as teaching, that are fundamental to the human experience. This doctoral dissertation project investigates developmental differences in stone knapping (shaping) skill acquisition between adult and child subjects. Using experimental archaeological methods, 45 adult and 45 child participants will be trained in an Oldowan-style, "least effort" flake production task and compared using metrics of flaking success and individual differences in cognitive ability, physical strength, and personality characteristics. Individual differences data will also be used to investigate within group variation in behavioral correlates of successful skill acquisition for both adult and child participants. Addressing an understudied area of research on human origins, results of this project will have implications for the evolution of the human capacity for cumulative culture and may serve as a reference point for existing archaeological assemblages that show evidence of skill differentials between lithic artifacts. Additionally, this project will serve as a form of science education outreach as part of its design is as an archaeology-themed summer day camp for the children participating in the study.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.