Is tool-making knowledge robust over time and across problems?

Personality predicts innovation and social learning in children: Implications for cultural evolution

Innovation and social learning are the pillars of cultural evolution, allowing cultural behaviours to cumulatively advance over generations. Yet, little is known about individual differences in the use of social and asocial information. We examined whether personality influenced 7-11-year-old children's (N = 282) propensity to elect to observe others first or independently generate solutions to novel problems. Conscientiousness was associated with electing for no demonstrations, while agreeableness was associated with opting for demonstrations. For children receiving demonstrations, openness to experience consistently predicted deviation from observed methods. Children who opted for no demonstrations were also more likely than those opting for demonstrations to exhibit tool manufacture on an innovation challenge and displayed higher creativity, as measured by an alternate uses task. These results highlight how new cultural traditions emerge, establish and advance by identifying which individuals generate new cultural variants in populations and which are influential in the diffusion of these variants, and help reduce the apparent tension within the 'ratchet' of cumulative culture.

A cognitive developmental approach is essential to understanding cumulative technological culture

Osiurak and Reynaud argue that children are not a good methodological choice to examine cumulative technological culture (CTC). However, the paper ignores other current work that suggests that young children do display some aspects of creative problem-solving. We argue that using multiple methodologies and examining how technical-reasoning develops in children will provide crucial support for a cognitive approach to CTC.

Innovative problem solving in great apes: the role of visual feedback in the floating peanut task

Nonhuman great apes show remarkable behavioural flexibility. Some individuals are even able to use water as a tool: They spit water into a vertical tube to make a peanut float upwards until it comes into reach (floating peanut task; FPT). In the current study, we used the FPT to investigate how visual feedback, an end-state demonstration and a social demonstration affect task performance in nonhuman great apes in three experiments. Our results indicate that apes who had acquired the solution with a clear tube maintained it with an opaque one. However, apes starting with an opaque tube failed to solve the task. Additionally, facing the peanut floating on a water-filled tube (i.e., an end-state demonstration) promoted success independent on the availability of visual feedback. Moreover, experiencing how water was poured into the tube either by a human demonstrator or by a water tap that had been opened either by the ape or a human did not seem to be of further assistance. First, this study suggests that great apes require visual feedback for solving the FPT, which is no longer required after the initial acquisition. Second, some subjects benefit from encountering the end-state, a finding corroborating previous studies.

Individual differences in children's innovative problem-solving are not predicted by divergent thinking or executive functions

Recent studies of children's tool innovation have revealed that there is variation in children's success in middle-childhood. In two individual differences studies, we sought to identify personal characteristics that might predict success on an innovation task. In Study 1, we found that although measures of divergent thinking were related to each other they did not predict innovation success. In Study 2, we measured executive functioning including: inhibition, working memory, attentional flexibility and ill-structured problem-solving. None of these measures predicted innovation, but, innovation was predicted by children's performance on a receptive vocabulary scale that may function as a proxy for general intelligence. We did not find evidence that children's innovation was predicted by specific personal characteristics.

Involvement of Technical Reasoning More Than Functional Knowledge in Development of Tool Use in Childhood

It is well-known that even toddlers are able to manipulate tools in an appropriate manner according to their physical properties. The ability of children to make novel tools in order to solve problems is, however, surprisingly limited. In adults, mechanical problem solving (MPS) has been proposed to be supported by "technical reasoning skills," which are thought to be involved in every situation requiring the use of a tool (whether conventional or unusual). The aim of this study was to investigate the typical development of real tool use (RTU) skills and its link with technical reasoning abilities in healthy children. Three experimental tasks were adapted from those used with adults: MPS (three different apparatus), RTU (10 familiar tool-object pairs), and functional knowledge (FK; 10 functional picture matching with familiar tools previously used). The tasks were administered to 85 healthy children divided into six age groups (from 6 to 14 years of age). The results revealed that RTU (p = 0.01) and MPS skills improve with age, even if this improvement differs according to the apparatus for the latter (p < 0.01 for the Hook task and p < 0.05 for the Sloping task). Results also showed that MPS is a better predictor of RTU than FK, with a significant and greater weight (importance weight: 0.65; Estimate ± Standard Error: 0.27 ± 0.08). Ours findings suggest that RTU and technical reasoning develop jointly in children, independently from development of FK. In addition, technical reasoning appears partially operative from the age of six onward, even though the outcome of these skills depends of the context in which they are applied (i.e., the type of apparatus).