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The acquisition of flexible tool use in preschoolers the impact of prior experience

  • 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.

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Metadaten
Author details:Birgit ElsnerORCiDGND, Bernd Schellhas
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000090
ISSN:2190-8370
Title of parent work (English):Zeitschrift für Psychologie = Journal of psychology
Publisher:Hogrefe
Place of publishing:Göttingen
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2012
Publication year:2012
Release date:2017/03/26
Tag:action planning; learning; preschoolers (2-4 years); tool use; transfer
Volume:220
Issue:1
Number of pages:6
First page:44
Last Page:49
Organizational units:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Psychologie
Peer review:Referiert
Institution name at the time of the publication:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Psychologie
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