The road to conventional tool use: Developmental changes in children's material engagement with artifacts in nursery school

Abstract

The development of tool use in early childhood is a topic of continuing interest in developmental psychology. However, the lack of studies in ecological settings results in many unknowns about how children come to use artifacts according to their cultural function. We report a longitudinal study with 17 sociodemographically diverse children (8 female) attending a nursery school in Madrid (Spain) and their two adult female teachers. Using mixed‐effects models and Granger causality analysis, we measured changes in the frequency and duration of children's object uses between 7 and 17 months of age and in the directional influences among pairs of behaviors performed by teachers and children. Results show a clear shift in how children use artifacts. As early as 12 months of age, the frequency of conventional uses outweighs that of all other types of object use. In addition, object uses become shorter in duration with age, irrespective of their type. Moreover, certain teachers' nonlinguistic communicative strategies (e.g., demonstrations of canonical use and placing gestures) significantly influence and promote children's conventional tool use. Findings shed light on how children become increasingly proficient in conventional tool use through interactions with artifacts and others in nursery school.

An ecological approach to conceptual thinking in material engagement

“…Several studies have shown that babies begin to use artifacts according to their cultural function around their first birthday (see Rodríguez et al, 2018). And since object functions only become available when demonstrated (Horst et al, 2005, p. 616), this cognitive achievement depends upon communication processes that take place through a wide range of semiotic resources (e.g., use demonstrations; ostensive, indexical, and symbolic gestures; language) that adults deploy within situations of triadic interaction (adult-baby-object), specifically in contexts of "natural pedagogy" (Alessandroni, 2023;Gergely & Csibra, 2013;Nonaka & Goldfield, 2018;Nonaka & Stoffregen, 2020;Rodríguez & Moro, 1999).…”

“…These kinds of behaviours can be observed from very early ages at the infant school, where children as young as 11 months of age already materially engage in a conceptual way with several things (e.g., pacifiers, cups, and bibs). Besides, as children develop, they become more skilled at bringing forth canonical ways of materially engaging with the world to fulfil essential functions such as self-regulation, communication with others, and understanding others' intentions (see Alessandroni, 2021Alessandroni, , 2023.…”

Materiality and cognitive development: Contemporary debates and empirical studies in early childhood

“…Recent scholarly literature on 5E cognition (i.e., embodied, enactive, extended, embedded, and ecological) has sparked renewed interest in approaches similar to those of Gesell and Gibson. Within this literature, cognition is conceptualized in terms of dynamic interactions between agents and their environments (Gallagher, 2020;Kiverstein & Rietveld, 2021;Newen et al, 2018), while cognitive development is viewed as the incremental enaction of practical skills (e.g., Nonaka & Goldfield, 2018;Travieso et al, 2020;Yakhlef & Rietveld, 2020), habits (e.g., Brinck & Reddy, 2020;Sheets-Johnstone, 2014), recurrent forms of material engagement (e.g., Alessandroni, 2021Alessandroni, , 2023Aston, 2020Aston, , 2022Malafouris, 2019Malafouris, , 2020Prezioso & Alessandroni, 2023), as well as expectations, anticipations, coordinations, and potentials for behaviour that unfold across various timescales (e.g., Adolph, 2019;Ossmy & Adolph, 2020).…”

Gestures, objects, and spaces: Exploring teachers’ multimodal communication in nursery schools

“…Adults frequently interact with children according to organized and predictable instances that are built around materi ality (Alessandroni, 2023), thus promoting relevant experiences and forms of behavior that are consistent with their cultural rules of use (Kärtner, 2018). During the first years of life, children's early experiences with the material world are co-constructed through joint actions with others, in which they acquire an increasingly active role (Moreno-Núñez et al, 2017).…”