A cross-cultural investigation of young children’s spontaneous invention of tool use behaviors

Through the mechanisms of observation, imitation and teaching, young children readily pick up the tool using behaviors of their culture. However, little is known about the baseline abilities of children’s tool use: what they might be capable of inventing on their own in the absence of socially provided information. It has been shown that children can spontaneously invent 11 of 12 candidate tool using behaviors observed within the foraging behaviors of wild non-human apes (Reindl, Beck, Apperly, & Tennie, 2016). However, no investigations to date have examined how tool use invention in children might vary across cultural contexts. The current study investigated the levels of spontaneous tool use invention in 2- to 5 year-old children from San Bushmen communities in South Africa and children in Australia on the same 12 candidate problem-solving tasks. Children in both cultural communities correctly invented all 12 candidate tool using behaviors, suggesting that these behaviors are wit...