Tool innovation may be a critical limiting step for the establishment of a rich tool-using culture: a perspective from child development.
Recent data show that human children (up to 8 years old) perform poorly when required to innovate tools. Our tool-rich culture may be more reliant on social learning and more limited by domain-general constraints such as ill-structured problem solving than otherwise thought.
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom. s.r.beck@bham.ac.uk
Sarah R
SR
Beck
Jackie
J
Chappell
Ian A
IA
Apperly
Nicola
N
Cutting
D000818:Animals; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013672:Technology; D053001:Tool Use Behavior