Miller Rachael, Frohnwieser Anna, Ding Ning, Troisi Camille A, Schiestl Martina, Gruber Romana, Taylor Alex H, Jelbert Sarah A, Boeckle Markus, Clayton Nicola S
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
R Soc Open Sci. 2020 Apr 15;7(4):192015. doi: 10.1098/rsos.192015. eCollection 2020 Apr.
In adult humans, decisions involving the choice and use of tools for future events typically require episodic foresight. Previous studies suggest some non-human species are capable of future planning; however, these experiments often cannot fully exclude alternative learning explanations. Here, we used a novel tool-use paradigm aiming to address these critiques to test flexible planning in 3- to 5-year-old children, in relation to executive function and language abilities. In the flexible planning task, children were not verbally cued during testing, single trials avoided consistent exposure to stimulus-reward relationships, and training trials provided experience of a predictable return of reward. Furthermore, unlike most standard developmental studies, we incorporated short delays before and after tool choice. The critical test choice included two tools with equal prior reward experience-each only functional in one apparatus. We tested executive function and language abilities using several standardized tasks. Our results echoed standard developmental research: 4- and 5-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds on the flexible planning task, and 5-year-old children outperformed younger children in most executive function and language tasks. Flexible planning performance did not correlate with executive function and language performance. This paradigm could be used to investigate flexible planning in a tool-use context in non-human species.
在成年人类中，涉及为未来事件选择和使用工具的决策通常需要情景预见能力。先前的研究表明，一些非人类物种具备未来规划能力；然而，这些实验往往无法完全排除其他学习解释。在此，我们采用了一种新颖的工具使用范式，旨在回应这些批评，以测试3至5岁儿童的灵活规划能力，并探究其与执行功能和语言能力的关系。在灵活规划任务中，测试期间不对儿童进行言语提示，单次试验避免持续接触刺激-奖励关系，且训练试验提供奖励可预测回归的经验。此外，与大多数标准发育研究不同，我们在工具选择前后加入了短暂延迟。关键测试选择包括两种先前奖励经验相同的工具——每种工具仅在一种装置中起作用。我们使用多项标准化任务测试执行功能和语言能力。我们的结果与标准发育研究一致：4岁和5岁儿童在灵活规划任务上的表现优于3岁儿童，且5岁儿童在大多数执行功能和语言任务上的表现优于年幼儿童。灵活规划表现与执行功能和语言表现无关。这种范式可用于研究非人类物种在工具使用情境中的灵活规划能力。
