TY  - JOUR
A1  - Elsner, Birgit
A1  - Schellhas, Bernd
T1  - The acquisition of flexible tool use in preschoolers the impact of prior experience
JF  - Zeitschrift für Psychologie = Journal of psychology
N2  - To investigate how preschoolers acquire a tool use strategy and how they adapt their tool use to a changed situation, 2- to 4-year-olds were asked to retrieve chips from a transparent box with a rod, either by stabbing and lifting through a top opening or by pushing through a front and a back opening. In both conditions, about 40% of the children acquired effective tool use by individual learning, and 90% of the other children learned this by observing only one demonstration. When confronted with a changed situation (i.e., previous opening covered, alternative opening uncovered), children perseverated with the recently learned, but now ineffective tool use strategy. Neither age nor acquisition type of the first strategy affected preschoolers' perseverations. Results indicate that prior tool use experiences have differential effects in situations that require either transferring known functions to novel objects or using a familiar tool for an alternative purpose.
KW  - tool use
KW  - preschoolers (2-4 years)
KW  - learning
KW  - transfer
KW  - action planning
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000090
SN  - 2190-8370
VL  - 220
IS  - 1
SP  - 44
EP  - 49
PB  - Hogrefe
CY  - Göttingen
ER  -