Infants' tool use action and understanding

描述（由申请人提供）：高级智能的最高成就包括将物体用作工具的能力。甚至在孩子们成为我们文化中工具的熟练使用者之前，他们就已经使用物品来实现目标结果或期望的目标。本研究旨在探讨婴儿使用工具获取所需物品的能力，以及对他人工具使用行为的目标导向性的认知能力。具体来说，我评估的影响，积极的和观察的经验，对婴儿的能力，学习如何使用工具，了解他人的工具使用行为，并概括他们的知识，以新颖的工具使用情况。在几项研究中，婴儿接受主动训练和练习使用工具来取回够不着的物体，或观看另一个人成功地使用工具来获得够不着的物体。婴儿随后参加概括试验，旨在评估婴儿的能力，概括工具使用策略，以新颖的工具使用情况下，在自己的行动和/或违反预期范式，评估婴儿的能力，以预期目标的另一个人的工具使用行动。基于先前的和初步的工作，它是预测，积极的经验将发挥优势的作用，在婴儿的能力，学习如何使用工具，并扩大他们的工具使用知识，以行动的其他人。这项工作的结果将提供有关工具使用表征的发展，婴儿对代理和因果关系的理解以及支持早期学习的机制的重要信息。此外，这些结果可能与自闭症的诊断和补救特别相关，自闭症是一种发育障碍，其特征是对他人行为的推理缺陷。 相关性：这项研究旨在通过评估观察和主动经验在婴儿工具使用行为中的作用以及他们对他人工具使用行为的理解来研究早期学习机制。这项工作将提供有关典型认知和社会发展所涉及的因素和过程的重要信息，这些信息可用于诊断和治疗自闭症等发育障碍。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A crowning achievement of advanced intelligence involves the ability to use objects as tools. Even before children become sophisticated users of the tools of our culture they use objects to act toward target outcomes or desired goals. This proposal investigates infants' developing ability to use tools to retrieve desired objects, and to recognize the goal-directed nature of others' tool use actions. Specifically, I assess the impact of active and observational experience on infants' ability to learn how to use tools, to understand the tool use actions of others and to generalize their knowledge to novel tool use contexts. Across several studies, infants receive active training and practice using a tool to retrieve out-of-reach objects or watch another person use the tool successfully to obtain out-of-reach objects. Infants subsequently take part in generalization trials designed to assess infants' ability to generalize tool use strategies to novel tool use contexts in their own actions and/or a violation-of- expectancy paradigm that assesses infants' ability to anticipate the goal of another person's tool use actions. Based on previous and preliminary work it is predicted that active experience will play a privileged role in infants' ability to learn how to use tools, and to extend their tool use knowledge to the actions of others. The findings from this work will provide important information regarding the development of tool use representations, infants' understanding of agency and causality, and mechanisms supporting early learning. In addition, these results may be particularly relevant to the diagnosis and remediation of autism, a developmental disorder that is characterized by deficits in reasoning about other people's behavior. RELEVANCE: The proposed research seeks to investigate early learning mechanisms by assessing the role of observational and active experience in infants' tool use behavior and their understanding of others' tool use acts. This work will provide important information regarding the factors and processes involved in typical cognitive and social development, information that can then be used in the diagnosis and remediation of developmental disorders, such as autism.