Early Cognitive Development Centre, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia.
School of Languages & Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, Australia.
Cognition. 2017 Nov;168:335-343. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.07.015. Epub 2017 Aug 4.
Young children typically demonstrate low rates of tool innovation. However, previous studies have limited children's performance by presenting tools with opaque affordances. In an attempt to scaffold children's understanding of what constitutes an appropriate tool within an innovation task we compared tools in which the focal affordance was visible to those in which it was opaque. To evaluate possible cultural specificity, data collection was undertaken in a Western urban population and a remote Indigenous community. As expected affordance visibility altered innovation rates: young children were more likely to innovate on a tool that had visible affordances than one with concealed affordances. Furthermore, innovation rates were higher than those reported in previous innovation studies. Cultural background did not affect children's rates of tool innovation. It is suggested that new methods for testing tool innovation in children must be developed in order to broaden our knowledge of young children's tool innovation capabilities.
幼儿通常表现出较低的工具创新率。然而，以前的研究通过呈现具有不透明功能的工具限制了儿童的表现。为了在创新任务中帮助儿童理解什么是合适的工具，我们比较了具有可见焦点功能和不可见焦点功能的工具。为了评估可能的文化特殊性，在一个西方城市人口和一个偏远的土著社区进行了数据收集。正如预期的那样，功能可见性改变了创新率：幼儿更有可能在具有可见功能的工具上进行创新，而不是在具有隐蔽功能的工具上进行创新。此外，创新率高于以前创新研究报告的创新率。文化背景并不影响儿童工具创新的速度。因此，为了扩大我们对幼儿工具创新能力的了解，必须开发新的儿童工具创新测试方法。
