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使用物体作为工具的能力。甚至在孩子们成为我们文化工具的熟练使用者之前，他们就会使用物体来实现目标结果或期望的目标。本研究旨在研究婴儿使用工具检索所需物品的能力，以及识别他人使用工具行为的目标导向性质。具体来说，我评估了主动和观察经验对婴儿学习如何使用工具的能力的影响，理解他人使用工具的行为，并将他们的知识推广到新的工具使用环境。在几项研究中，婴儿接受了积极的训练，练习使用工具取回遥不可及的物体，或者观察另一个人成功地使用工具获得遥不可及的物体。随后，婴儿参加了一般化试验，旨在评估婴儿在自己的行动中概括工具使用策略到新工具使用情境的能力和/或评估婴儿预测他人工具使用行动目标的违反期望范式的能力。基于先前和初步的工作，我们预测主动经验将在婴儿学习如何使用工具的能力中发挥特殊作用，并将他们的工具使用知识扩展到他人的行动中。这项工作的发现将为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提供重要信息。此外，这些结果可能与自闭症的诊断和治疗特别相关，自闭症是一种发育障碍，其特征是无法对他人的行为进行推理。

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.