The Emergence of Tool Use in the First Years of Life
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 5 March 2027 | Viewed by 218
Special Issue Editor
Interests: cognitive development; motor development; tool use; visual-manual coordination; developmental disabilities
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Using hand-held tools to engage in actions allows us to successfully accomplish a wider range of activities with our hands than we would otherwise be able to. How can we understand the origins and development of tool use? To answer this question, researchers have turned to studying the emergence of tool use in infancy and early childhood. New tool use skills can appear via social learning (in which a child sees a more-skilled actor in the environment using a tool in a certain way and later emulates that activity) and via problem-solving (in which a child identifies a problem and works to resolve the problem using a tool on their own). These two approaches can occur separately or in combination. Using tools for goal-directed action requires the involvement of motor skills and cognitive skills. The motor skills can include forming the proper grip required to wield the tool and control its movement. The cognitive skills can include knowing how and where to grasp the tool to use it properly. For successful tool use, these two sets of skills necessarily depend on each other, so both must be involved. For culturally significant tool-using activities (e.g., eating utensils and writing utensils), direct and active teaching takes place. In this Special Issue, we seek to include research on the emergence and development of tool use from multiple perspectives, including, but not limited to, developmental psychological perspectives, cross-cultural psychological perspectives, and comparative (e.g., cross-species) psychological perspectives.
Prof. Dr. Amy Work Needham
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- motor development
- cognitive development
- tool use
- visual–manual coordination
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