The process of tool innovation in young children: An attempt to bridge the Gestalt and the perception-action theories

Background: Tool innovation in young children is an underexplored topic, and the Gestalt and the perception-action theories offer different explanations regarding the process of tool innovation. Aims: We aimed to develop nine tool innovation tasks to investigate the tool innovation process in 3-to 6-year-old children, while providing evidence on the validity of the tasks. Sample: From three kindergartens, 141 Chinese children (77 boys and 64 girls) took part in this research. Methods: Children's task performance was coded as task success (whether they retrieved the reward) and ideal manipulation (whether they performed a certain manipulation), and children's task exploration process was coded for fixation (the frequency of repeating the same actions) and flexibility (the frequency of shifting to novel actions). Children's cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibitory control, divergent thinking, and general intelligence were also measured. Results: The new tasks showed varied difficulty levels and exhibited high internal consistency, and children's task performance was positively associated with their individual differences in age, general intelligence, and divergent thinking. Children's behavioral fixation hinders their tool innovation, and this effect was strengthened for easier compared to harder tasks. Children's behavioral flexibility enhances their tool innovation, and this effect was seemingly stronger for harder compared to easier tasks. Conclusions: The new tasks were robust and suitable for studying young children's tool innovation. Task difficulty level has a critical role in shaping children's tool innovation process, which may serve as a mechanism to bridge the Gestalt and the perception-action theories in explaining the process of tool innovation.