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Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Osiurak reports equipment, drugs, or supplies was provided by French National Research Agency. Osiurak reports equipment, drugs, or supplies was provided by Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes Region.

Some animals have basic culture, but to date there is not much evidence that cultural traits evolve as part of a cumulative process as seen in humans. This may be due to limits in animal physical cognition, such as an inability to compare the efficiency of a novel behavioural innovation with an already existing tradition. We investigated this possibility with a study on a natural tool innovation in wild chimpanzees: moss-sponging, which recently emerged in some individuals to extract mineral-rich liquids at a natural clay-pit. The behaviour probably arose as a variant of leaf-sponging, a tool technique seen in all studied chimpanzee communities. We found that moss-sponges not only absorbed more liquid but were manufactured and used more rapidly than leaf-sponges, suggesting a functional improvement. To investigate whether chimpanzees understood the advantage of moss- over leaf-sponges, we experimentally offered small amounts of rainwater in an artificial cavity of a portable log, together with both sponge materials, moss and leaves. We found that established moss-spongers (having used both leaves and moss to make sponges) preferred moss to prepare a sponge to access the rainwater, whereas leaf-spongers (never observed using moss) preferred leaves. Survey data finally demonstrated that moss was common in forest areas near clay-pits but nearly absent in other forest areas, suggesting that natural moss-sponging was at least partly constrained by ecology. Together, these results suggest that chimpanzees perceive functional improvements in tool quality, a crucial prerequisite for cumulative culture., (© 2018 The Author(s).)

Tool use relies on numerous cognitive functions, including sustained attention and understanding of causality. In this study, we investigated the effects of tool-use training on cognitive performance in primates. Specifically, we applied the Primate Cognition Test Battery to three long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) at different stages of a training procedure that consisted of using a rake to retrieve out-of-reach food items. In addition, we evaluated a control group (n = 3) performing a grasping task, in order to account for possible effects related to a simple motor act. Our results showed that tool-use training enhances mean performance in the physical cognition domain, i.e. the understanding of spatial relations, numerosity and causality. In particular, causal cognition (evaluating noise- and shape-related causality and understanding of tool properties) showed significant improvement after training, whereas spatial cognition (evaluating spatial memory, object permanence, rotation and transposition) showed a trend to improvement. Despite these findings, none of our trained monkeys succeeded in the tool-use task of the Primate Cognition Test Battery, which involved an unfamiliar tool. Some training-related effects did not persist after a 35-day resting period, suggesting that continuous practice may be necessary, or that a longer training period before resting may be needed to better maintain cognitive performance. In contrast with the training group, the control group did not display any change in cognitive performance. This finding paves the way to further investigation into the link between tool-use behaviour and the evolution of primate cognition.

To gain a better understanding of the evolution of animal cognition, it is necessary to test and compare the cognitive abilities of a broad array of taxa. Meaningful inter-species comparisons are best achieved by employing universal paradigms that standardize testing among species. Many cognitive paradigms, however, have been tested in only a few taxa, mostly birds and primates. One such example, known as the Aesop's Fable paradigm, is designed to assess causal understanding in animals using water displacement. To evaluate the universal effectiveness of the Aesop's Fable paradigm, we applied this paradigm to a previously untested taxon, the raccoon (Procyon lotor). We first trained captive raccoons to drop stones into a tube of water to retrieve a floating food reward. Next, we presented successful raccoons with objects that differed in the amount of water they displaced to determine whether raccoons could select the most functional option. Raccoons performed differently than corvids and human children did in previous studies of Aesop's Fable, and we found raccoons to be innovative in many aspects of this task. We suggest that raccoon performance in this paradigm reflected differences in tangential factors, such as behavior, morphology, and testing procedures, rather than cognitive deficiencies. We also present insight into previously undocumented challenges that should better inform future Aesop's Fable studies incorporating more diverse taxa.

Spontaneous tool innovation to solve physical problems is difficult for young children. In three studies, we explored the effect of prior experience with tools on tool innovation in children aged 4-7years (N=299). We also gave children an experience more consistent with that experienced by corvids in similar studies to enable fairer cross-species comparisons. Children who had the opportunity to use a premade target tool in the task context during a warm-up phase were significantly more likely to innovate a tool to solve the problem on the test trial compared with children who had no such warm-up experience. Older children benefited from either using or merely seeing a premade target tool prior to a test trial requiring innovation. Younger children were helped by using a premade target tool. Seeing the tool helped younger children in some conditions. We conclude that spontaneous innovation of tools to solve physical problems is difficult for children. However, children from 4years of age can innovate the means to solve the problem when they have had experience with the solution (visual or haptic exploration). Directions for future research are discussed., (Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The present theoretical framework highlights a common action-perception mechanism for tool use, spoken language, and foresight capacity. On the one hand, it has been suggested that human language and the capacity to envision the future (i.e. foresight) have, from an evolutionary viewpoint, developed mutually along with the pressure of tool use. This co-evolution has afforded humans an evident survival advantage in the animal kingdom because language can help to refine the representation of future scenarios, which in turn can help to encourage or discourage engagement in appropriate and efficient behaviours. On the other hand, recent assumptions regarding the evolution of the brain have capitalized on the concept of "neuronal recycling". In the domain of cognitive neuroscience, neuronal recycling means that during evolution, some neuronal areas and cognitive functions have been recycled to manage new environmental and social constraints. In the present article, we propose that the co-evolution of tool use, language, and foresight represents a suitable example of such functional recycling throughout a well-defined common action-perception mechanism, i.e. the ideomotor mechanism. This ideomotor account is discussed in light of different future ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspectives.

The brain has evolved different approaches to solve problems, but the mechanisms that determine which approach to take remain unclear. One possibility is that control progresses from simpler processes, such as associative learning, to more complex ones, such as relational reasoning, when the simpler ones prove inadequate. Alternatively, control could be based on competition between the processes. To test between these possibilities, we posed the support problem to rhesus monkeys using a tool-use paradigm, in which subjects could pull an object (the tool) toward themselves to obtain an otherwise out-of-reach goal item. We initially provided one problem exemplar as a choice: for the correct option, a food item placed on the support tool; for the incorrect option, the food item placed off the tool. Perceptual cues were also correlated with outcome: e.g., red, triangular tool correct, blue, rectangular tool incorrect. Although the monkeys simply needed to touch the tool to register a response, they immediately pulled it, reflecting a relational reasoning process between themselves and another object (R self-other ), rather than an associative one between the arbitrary touch response and reward (A resp-reward ). Probe testing then showed that all four monkeys used a conjunction of perceptual features to select the correct option, reflecting an associative process between stimuli and reward (A stim-reward ). We then added a second problem exemplar and subsequent testing revealed that the monkeys switched to using the on/off relationship, reflecting a relational reasoning process between two objects (R other-other ). Because behavior appeared to reflect R self-other rather than A resp-reward , and A stim-reward prior to R other-other , our results suggest that cognitive processes are selected via competitive control dynamics., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Scale errors offer a unique context in which to examine the interdependencies between language and action. Here, we manipulated the presence of labels in a tool-based paradigm previously shown to elicit high rates of scale errors. We predicted that labels would increase children's scale errors with tools by directing attention to shape, function, and category membership. Children between the ages of 2 and 3years were introduced to an apparatus and shown how to produce its function using a tool (e.g., scooping a toy fish from an aquarium using a net). In each of two test trials, children were asked to choose between two novel tools to complete the same task: one that was a large non-functional version of the tool presented in training and one novel functional object (different in shape). A total of four tool-apparatus sets were tested. The results indicated that without labels, scale errors decreased over the two test trials. In contrast, when labels were present, scale errors remained high in the second test trial. We interpret these findings as evidence that linguistic cues can influence children's action-based errors with tools., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Many species exploit immediately apparent dimensions of objects during tool use and manufacture and operate over internal perceptual representations of objects (they move and reorient objects in space, have rules of operation to deform or modify objects, etc). Humans, however, actively test for functionally relevant object properties before such operations begin, even when no previous percepts of a particular object's qualities in the domain have been established. We hypothesize that such prospective diagnostic interventions are a human specialization of cognitive function that has been entirely overlooked in the neuropsychological literature. We presented chimpanzees with visually identical rakes: one was functional for retrieving a food reward; the other was non-functional (its base was spring-loaded). Initially, they learned that only the functional tool could retrieve a distant reward. In test 1, we explored if they would manually test for the rakes' rigidity during tool selection, but before using it. We found no evidence of such behavior. In test 2, we obliged the apes to deform the non-functional tool's base before using it, in order to evaluate whether this would cause them to switch rakes. It did not. Tests 3-6 attempted to focus the apes' attention on the functionally relevant property (rigidity). Although one ape eventually learned to abandon the non-functional rake before using it, she still did not attempt to test the rakes for rigidity prior to use. While these results underscore the ability of chimpanzees to use novel tools, at the same time they point toward a fundamental (and heretofore unexplored) difference in causal reasoning between humans and apes. We propose that this behavioral difference reflects a human specialization in how object properties are represented, which could have contributed significantly to the evolution of our technological culture. We discuss developing a new line of evolutionarily motivated neuropsychological research on action disorders., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Since more than a century, neuropsychological models have assumed that the left inferior parietal cortex is central to tool use by storing manipulation knowledge (the manipulation-based approach). Interestingly, recent neuropsychological evidence indicates that the left inferior parietal cortex might rather support the ability to reason about physical object properties (the reasoning-based approach). Historically, these two approaches have been developed from data obtained in left brain-damaged patients. This review is the first one to (1) give an overview of the two aforementioned approaches and (2) reanalyze functional neuroimaging data of the past decade to examine their predictions. Globally, we demonstrate that the left inferior parietal cortex is involved in the understanding of tool-use actions, providing support for the reasoning-based approach. We also discuss the functional involvement of the different regions of the tool-use brain network (left supramarginal gyrus, left intraparietal sulcus, left posterior temporal cortex). Our findings open promising avenues for future research on the neurocognitive basis of human tool use., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The variety and complexity of human-made tools are unique in the animal kingdom. Research investigating why human tool use is special has focused on the role of social learning: while non-human great apes acquire tool-use behaviours mostly by individual (re-)inventions, modern humans use imitation and teaching to accumulate innovations over time. However, little is known about tool-use behaviours that humans can invent individually, i.e. without cultural knowledge. We presented 2- to 3.5-year-old children with 12 problem-solving tasks based on tool-use behaviours shown by great apes. Spontaneous tool use was observed in 11 tasks. Additionally, tasks which occurred more frequently in wild great apes were also solved more frequently by human children. Our results demonstrate great similarity in the spontaneous tool-use abilities of human children and great apes, indicating that the physical cognition underlying tool use shows large overlaps across the great ape species. This suggests that humans are neither born with special physical cognition skills, nor that these skills have degraded due to our species' long reliance of social learning in the tool-use domain., (© 2016 The Authors.)

For theories of embodied cognition, reading a word activates sensorimotor representations in a similar manner to seeing the physical object the word represents. Thus, reading words representing objects of different sizes interfere with motor planning, inducing changes in grip aperture. An outstanding issue is whether word reading can also evoke sensorimotor information about the weight of objects. This issue was addressed in two experiments wherein participants have first to read the name of an object (Experiment 1)/observe the object (Experiment 2) and then to transport versus use bottles of water. The objects presented as primes were either lighter or heavier than the bottles to be grasped. Results indicated that the main parameters of motor planning recorded (initiation times and finger contact points) were not affected by the presentation of words as primes (Experiment 1). By contrast, the presentation of visual objects as primes induced significant changes in these parameters (Experiment 2). Participants changed their way of grasping the bottles, particularly in the use condition. Taken together, these results suggest that the activation of concepts does not automatically evoke sensorimotor representations about the weight of objects, but visual objects do., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Tool use is taxonomically associated with high behavioural flexibility and innovativeness, and its prevalence is greater in primates and some bird species. This association, however, is not known to be causally determinant of tool-related competence since flexibility and innovativeness are often observed in the absence of tool use and vice versa. For this reason, it is interesting to explore whether animals that can be loosely categorized as outstanding, or 'intelligent' physical problem solvers, are also remarkable using tools innovatively, rather than tool use presenting special constraints. We investigate this problem using plush-crested jays (Cyanocorax chrysops), a corvid new to cognitive research that shows highly flexible and inquisitive behaviour in the wild and has not been reported to use tools. We tested jays in two tasks of apparent similar manipulative complexity and incentive, one involving a tool (T) and the other not (NT). In the NT task birds had to open a box with a transparent lid blocked by a latch to get a reward, whereas in the T task, they had to use a rake to pull out the reward from the box. Eight out of nine subjects succeeded in the NT task, whereas none of them learned to solve the T task. This is consistent with tool use involving dedicated competencies, rather than just high problem-solving proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning is a type of problem solving in which a course of future action is devised via mental computation. Potential advantages of planning for tool use include reduced effort to gather tools, closer alignment to an efficient tool design, and increased foraging efficiency. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in the Goualougo Triangle use a variety of different types of tools. We hypothesized that procurement strategy (brought to the termite nest, manufactured or acquired at the termite nest, or borrowed from others) reflects planning for current needs, with tool transport behavior varying by tool type and by age and sex class. It is also possible that chimpanzees anticipate the need for tools at future times, which would be evidenced by transporting multiple tool types for a sequential task. One year of video recordings at termite nests were systematically screened for tool procurement; data comprised 299 tool procurement events across 66 chimpanzees. In addition, we screened video recordings of leaf sponging and honey gathering, which resulted in another 38 procurement events. Fishing probes, which are typically used during a single visit, were typically transported to termite nests, while puncturing tools, which are durable and remain on site, were more often acquired at termite nests. Most tools transported in multiples were fishing probes, perhaps in anticipation that a single probe might not last through an entire foraging bout or might be transferred to another chimpanzee. We further documented that chimpanzees transported tool sets, comprising multiple different tool types used in sequence. Mature chimpanzees transported tools more often than did immatures. These observations suggest that chimpanzees plan tool use flexibly, reflecting the availability of raw materials and the likelihood that specific tool types will be needed for particular tasks. Developmental studies and further integration of behavioral, spatial, and archaeological data will help to illuminate the decision making and time depth of planning associated with tool technologies in living primates and hominin ancestors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conception and creation of tools, their design, refinements and uses are traditionally viewed as being direct elaborations of inherent human capabilities. Here, we offer an alternative to this traditional perspective. Using a tool to complete any given task serves to change that task which, in turn, impacts and alters the tools' user via the performance of current and subsequent tasks. Moreover, as each task evolves, humans have come to shape additional tools to respond accordingly. These ever-increasing complexifications then serve to stimulate expansion in inherent human cognitive capabilities themselves. Here, we do not view humans as the initial creators of tools. Rather, the a priori presence of tools in the ambient environment explains, ab initio, why the species homo sapiens has evolved in the way that history records. We thus propose that tools create humans. The subsequent symbiosis between humans and those tools, portrayed as a cumulative spiral structure, serves to frame this evolution of elaborative technologies that have been used across time to achieve socially desired objectives. From our premise, we envision evident lines of progress that can be anticipated for the future of this human-tool dyad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I observed a wild kākā (Nestor meridionalis) excavate a piece of deadwood from the branch it was perched on and carry it to a new position immediately above a perched predatory falcon (Falco novaeseelandiae). It then raised its head upwards, and in a single downward motion with its head, released the piece of wood towards the falcon below. The piece of wood struck the falcon in the back, which immediately took flight and disappeared from view. I conclude my description of this anecdotal observation of anti-predatory tool use with caveats and alternative interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology is central to human life but hard to define and study. This review synthesizes advances in fields from anthropology to evolutionary biology and neuroscience to propose an interdisciplinary cognitive science of technology. The foundation of this effort is an evolutionarily motivated definition of technology that highlights three key features: material production, social collaboration, and cultural reproduction. This broad scope respects the complexity of the subject but poses a challenge for theoretical unification. Addressing this challenge requires a comparative approach to reduce the diversity of real-world technological cognition to a smaller number of recurring processes and relationships. To this end, a synthetic perceptual-motor hypothesis (PMH) for the evolutionary–developmental–cultural construction of technological cognition is advanced as an initial target for investigation. Evolutionary theory and paleoanthropological/archaeological evidence motivate a theoretical definition of technology as socially reproduced and elaborated behavior involving the manipulation and modification of objects to enact changes in the physical environment. This definition helps to resolve or obviate ongoing controversies in the anthropological, neuroscientific, and psychological literature relevant to technology. A review of evidence from across these disciplines reveals that real-world technologies are diverse in detail but unified by the underlying demands and dynamics of material production. This creates opportunities for meaningful synthesis using a comparative method. A 'perceptual‐motor hypothesis' proposes that technological cognition is constructed on biocultural evolutionary and developmental time scales from ancient primate systems for sensorimotor prediction and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An epistemological account of tool use is fundamental for a better comprehension of technical objects within the philosophy of technology. In this paper, we put forward an answer to the question "What is the role of causal cognition in skillful tool use?" We argue that an interventionist account of causal representation enables us to see how cases of skillful tool use presuppose the acquisition of representations of the causal relationships between direct interventions on a tool and the desired effects. This approach allows us to explain two of the main features of skillful tool use: systematicity and generality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once considered only a human behavior, reports of tool use by a variety of animals have accumulated. Likewise, various definitions of tool use have also amassed. Although some researchers argue that understanding the evolutionary drivers of tool use is more important than identifying and describing these behaviors, the central issue of defining what constitutes tool use has not been fully addressed. Here we analyze prominent definitions of tool use and review the application of these definitions in scientific and educational literature. We demonstrate that many behaviors recently described as tool use do not meet criteria for prevalent definitions, while other neglected behaviors may constitute a form of tool use. These examples show how the use of inconsistent definitions of tool use in research can result in different conclusions from the same observations. Our aim is to demonstrate that a universally acceptable definition of tool use based on traditional, evolutionary, and operational understanding of behavior is needed. The rationale is that this review will stimulate the consistent and explicit use of specific terminology in tool use research. This would help define specific examples of each natural observation from a common measuring stick, allowing better comparative studies and classification of these unique behaviors.//

Rooks, Eurasian jays and NC crows have already solved the Aesop's fable paradigm, using stones to raise a water level to get a previously out of reach reward. Here we test kea parrots on their understanding of water displacement. In Experiment 1, they preferentially chose the water-filled tube over two solid substrates (sand, rocks) within 5 trials. In Experiment 2, they generalised to novel coloured substrates in the first trial. In Experiment 3, confronted with two water-filled tubes, one of which was made unsolvable by preventing the water from rising, none of the kea managed to solve the task. This suggests that their performance in Experiments 1 and 2 was reward association with the liquid-filled tube, without attendance to changes in water level. These results therefore provide no evidence of causal understanding of water displacement and highlight that such an understanding is not required for solving Aesop's Fable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The controlled semantic cognition framework proposes that the ventral anterior temporal lobes (vATL) in the left and right hemisphere function as an integrated hub region supporting transmodal semantic representations. The clinical evidence for the transmodal function of vATL is largely based on studies of semantic dementia patients with severe anomia, who also show impaired performance on nonverbal tasks that involve the retrieval of knowledge about objects and their prototypical use, such as the production of tool use pantomimes. Yet, evidence from patients with apraxia and functional neuroimaging studies in healthy adults does not implicate vATL in pantomime production. We, therefore, compared semantic retrieval of object-action associations for overt verb and pantomime production from picture and word stimuli. Our results show that, independent of stimulus modality, the retrieval of object-action associations for verb, but not pantomime, production is related to activity in bilateral vATL. Bilateral vATL activation was also observed for meaningless verbal responses that did not require the retrieval of object-action associations. Taken together, our results suggest that bilateral vATL is not engaged in the retrieval of object-action associations per se, but rather supports semantic representations that are functionally specialized for language. These findings have implications for the semantic cognition framework and our understanding of the dependence of conceptual knowledge on language. Highlights • Investigates engagement of transmodal semantic hub for nonverbal behaviour. • Compares behaviour and brain activation underlying verb and pantomime production. • Semantic control network activated for verb and pantomime production. • Semantic hub only engaged during verb but not pantomime production. • Results suggests that semantic hub is specialized for language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay investigates the practical ways that artists and craftspeople cultivate mathematical sensibilities through their practical immersion in making and problem-solving. Mathematical sensibilities refer to skilled kinds of perception and heightened levels of attention and discernment regarding the qualitative properties of an object or composition, such as its shape, proportion, balance, symmetry, centredness, alignment or levelness. It also includes an 'intuitive' quantitative sense of volume, mass, weight, thickness and dimension. The objective of the investigation is not to describe the ways that a maker's existing knowledge and training in formal mathematics is put into practice, but rather to elucidate the ways that their practices of making produce kinds of 'non-formalised', context-dependent mathematical understanding and knowledge. The starting point for exploring embodied mathematizing is therefore not from the cognitive or neurosciences, psychology or formal mathematics, it is argued, but rather from a phenomenological approach - 'an opening on the world' - that attends to person, materials, tools and other physical and qualitative features that make up the total environment in which activity unfolds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence is reviewed indicating that the extraordinary aspects of the human mind are due to our species’ ability to go beyond simple “dyadic associations” and to process the relations among three items of information simultaneously. Classic explanations of the “triadic” nature of human skills have been advocated by various scholars in the context of the evolution of human cognition. Here I summarize the core processes as found in (i) the syntax of language, (ii) tool-usage, and (iii) joint attention. I then review the triadic foundations of two perceptual phenomena of great importance in human aesthetics: (iv) harmony perception and (v) pictorial depth perception. In all five subfields of human psychology, most previous work has emphasized the recursive, hierarchical complexity of such “higher cognition,” but a strongly reductionist approach indicates that the core mechanisms are triadic. It is concluded that the cognitive skills traditionally considered to be “uniquely” human require three-way associational processing that most non-Primate animal species find difficult or impossible, but all members of Homo sapiens – regardless of small cultural differences – find easy and inherently intriguing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the evolution, humans have constantly developed and improved their technologies. This evolution began with the use of physical tools, those tools that increase our sensorimotor abilities (e.g., first stone tools, modern knives, hammers, pencils). Although we still use some of these tools, we also employ in daily life more sophisticated tools for which we do not systematically understand the underlying physical principles (e.g., computers, cars). Current research is also turned toward the development of brain-computer interfaces directly linking our brain activity to machines (i.e., symbiotic tools). The ultimate goal of research on this topic is to identify the key cognitive processes involved in these different modes of interaction. As a primary step to fulfill this goal, we offer a first attempt at a common framework, based on the idea that humans shape technologies, which also shape us in return. The framework proposed is organized into three levels, describing how we interact when using physical (Past), sophisticated (Present), and symbiotic (Future) technologies. Here we emphasize the role played by technical reasoning and practical reasoning, two key cognitive processes that could nevertheless be progressively suppressed by the proficient use of sophisticated and symbiotic tools. We hope that this framework will provide a common ground for researchers interested in the cognitive basis of human tool-use interactions, from paleoanthropology to neuroergonomics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a cursor-control task, the sensed positions of cursor and hand are biased toward each other. We previously found different characteristics of implicit and explicit measures of the bias of sensed hand position toward the position of the cursor, suggesting the existence of distinct neural representations. Here we further explored differences between the two types of measure by varying the proportions of trials with explicit hand-position (H) and cursor-position (C) judgments (C20:H80, C50:H50, and C80:H20). In each trial, participants made a reaching movement to a remembered target, with the visual feedback being rotated randomly, and subsequently they judged the hand or the cursor position. Both the explicitly and implicitly measured biases of sensed hand position were stronger with a low proportion (C80:H20) than with a high proportion (C20:H80) of hand-position judgments, suggesting that both measures place more weight on the sensory modality relevant for the more frequent judgment. With balanced proportions of such judgments (C50:H50), the explicitly assessed biases were similar to those observed with a high proportion of cursor-position judgments (C80:H20), whereas the implicitly assessed biases were similar to those observed with a high proportion of hand-position judgments (C20:H80). Because strong weights of cursor-position or hand-position information may be difficult to increase further but are easy to reduce, the findings suggest that the implicit measure of the bias of sensed hand position places a relatively stronger weight on proprioceptive hand-position information, which is increased no further by a high proportion of hand-position judgments. Conversely, the explicit measure places a relatively stronger weight on visual cursor-position information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studying human perception and performance researchers must understand how the body schema is modified to accurately represent one's capabilities when tools are used, as humans use tools that alter their capabilities frequently. The present work tested the idea that calibration is responsible for modifying an embodied action schema during tool use. We investigated calibration in the context of manual activity in near space through a behavioral measure. Participants made blind reaches to various visual distances in pre- and post-test phases using a short tool that did not extend their reach. During an intervening calibration phase they received visual feedback about the accuracy of their reaches, with half of the participants reaching with a tool that extended their reach by 30 cm. Results indicated both groups showed calibration appropriate to the type of tool that they used during the calibration phase, and this calibration carried over to reaches made in the post-test. These results inform discussions on the proposed embodied action schema and have applications to virtual reality, specifically the development of self-avatars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spontaneous crafting of hook-tools from bendable material to lift a basket out of a vertical tube in corvids has widely been used as one of the prime examples of animal tool innovation. However, it was recently suggested that the animals' solution was hardly innovative but strongly influenced by predispositions from habitual tool use and nest building. We tested Goffin's cockatoo, which is neither a specialized tool user nor a nest builder, on a similar task set-up. Three birds individually learned to bend hook tools from straight wire to retrieve food from vertical tubes and four subjects unbent wire to retrieve food from horizontal tubes. Pre-experience with ready-made hooks had some effect but was not necessary for success. Our results indicate that the ability to represent and manufacture tools according to a current need does not require genetically hardwired behavioural routines, but can indeed arise innovatively from domain general cognitive processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detailed analysis of tool use behaviors can disclose the underlying cognitive traits of the users. We investigated the technique used by wild chimpanzees to extract the underground nests of stingless bees ( Meliplebeia lendliana), which represent a hard-to-reach resource given their highly undetectable location. Using remote-sensor camera trap footage, we analyzed 151 visits to 50 different bee nests by 18 adult chimpanzees of both sexes. We quantified the degree of complexity and flexibility of this technique by looking at the behavioral repertoire and at its structural organization. We used Generalized Linear Mixed Models to test whether individuals differed in their action repertoire sizes and in their action sequencing patterns, as well as in their preferences of use of different behavioral elements (namely, actions, and grip types). We found that subjects showed non-randomly organized sequences of actions and that the occurrence of certain actions was predicted by the type of the previous action in the sequences. Subjects did not differ in their repertoire sizes, and all used extractive actions involving tools more often than manual digging. As for the type of grip employed, the grip involving the coordinated use of hands and feet together was most frequently used by all subjects when perforating, and we detected significant individual preferences in this domain. Overall, we describe a highly complex and flexible extractive technique, and propose the existence of inter-individual variation in it. We discuss our results in the light of the evolution of higher cognitive abilities in the human lineage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While several cognitive domains have been widely investigated in the field of aging, the age-related effects on tool use are still an open issue and hardly any studies on tool use and aging is available. A significant body of literature has indicated that tool use skills might be supported by at least two different types of knowledge, namely, mechanical knowledge and semantic knowledge. However, neither the contribution of these kinds of knowledge to familiar tool use, nor the effects of aging on mechanical and semantic knowledge have been explored in normal aging. The aim of the present study was to fill this gap. To do so, 98 healthy elderly adults were presented with three tasks: a classical, familiar tool use task, a novel tool use task assessing mechanical knowledge, and a picture matching task assessing semantic knowledge. The results showed that aging has a negative impact on tool use tasks and on knowledge supporting tool use skills. We also found that aging did not impact mechanical and semantic knowledge in the same way, confirming the distinct nature of those forms of knowledge. Finally, our results stressed that mechanical and semantic knowledge are both involved in the ability to use familiar tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenological philosopher Martin Heidegger's proposed transition from readiness-to-hand to presence-at-hand and the hypothesis of extended cognition were addressed empirically in an experiment on tool use. It involved a video game of steering erratically moving objects to a target while performing a secondary cognitive task. A strong perturbation of the hand-pointer linkage in the video game induced the transition from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand. In Experiment 1, this perturbation resulted in decreased motor performance and improved recall of task-irrelevant features. Experiment 2 replicated these results and addressed additional questions. Measures of movement variability based on the multifractal formalism confirmed the hypothesized decrease in functional integration of the tool during the perturbation. Dynamical interactions allow user and tool to act as a system. The tool is properly described as ready-to-hand during normal operation but as present-at-hand during perturbation. Physiological measures showed that the ready-to-hand to present-at-hand transition does not necessarily lead to a stress response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osiurak and Badets (2016) examined the validity of the manipulation-based versus the reasoning-based approaches to tool use in light of studies in experimental psychology and neuropsychology. They concluded that the reasoning-based approach seems to be more promising than the manipulation-based approach for understanding the current literature. Buxbaum (2017) questioned this conclusion and raised certain theoretical limitations with regard to the reasoning-based approach. She also suggested that this approach is not well-equipped to integrate the existing psychological and neuroanatomical data in the tool use domain. In this context, she presented a neurocognitive model--the "Two Action Systems Plus" (2AS + ) framework--deeply anchored in the embodied cognition approach. In this reply, we address the key points raised by Buxbaum, leading us to draw 2 new conclusions. The first is that the reasoning-based approach integrates the existing psychological and neuroanatomical data not only in the tool use domain, but also in the motor control domain. As a matter of fact, it is even better equipped than the 2AS+ to account for recent neuroscience data. The second is that the 2AS+ suffers from epistemological and theoretical limitations, generating confusion as to what manipulation knowledge-a core concept in this model-precisely is. To sum up, 2AS+ illustrates potential misuse of embodied cognition, viewing tool use mainly as a matter of manipulation and not of understanding mechanical actions between tools and objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reasoning-based approach championed by Francois Osiurak and Arnaud Badets (Osiurak & Badets, 2016) denies the existence of sensory-motor memories of tool use except in limited circumstances, and suggests instead that most tool use is subserved solely by online technical reasoning about tool properties. In this commentary, I highlight the strengths and limitations of the reasoning-based approach and review a number of lines of evidence that manipulation knowledge is in fact used in tool action tasks. In addition, I present a "two route" neurocognitive model of tool use called the "Two Action Systems Plus (2AS+)" framework that posits a complementary role for online and stored information and specifies the neurocognitive substrates of task-relevant action selection. This framework, unlike the reasoning based approach, has the potential to integrate the existing psychological and functional neuroanatomic data in the tool use domain [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A range of non-human animals frequently manipulate and explore objects in their environment, which may enable them to learn about physical properties and potentially form more abstract concepts of properties such as weight and rigidity. Whether animals can apply the information learned during their exploration to solve novel problems, however, and whether they actually change their exploratory behaviour to seek functional information about objects have not been fully explored. We allowed kea (Nestor notabilis) and New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) to explore sets of novel objects both before and after encountering a task in which some of the objects could function as tools. Following this, subjects were given test trials in which they could choose among the objects they had explored to solve a tool-use task. Several individuals from both species performed above chance on these test trials, and only did so after exploring the objects, compared with a control experiment with no prior exploration phase. These results suggest that selection of functional tools may be guided by information acquired during exploration. Neither kea nor crows changed the duration or quality of their exploration after learning that the objects had a functional relevance, suggesting that birds do not adjust their behaviour to explicitly seek this information.

It is known that the functional properties of an object can interact with perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes. Previously we have found that a between-subjects manipulation of judgment instructions resulted in different manipulability-related memory biases in an incidental memory test. To better understand this effect we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) while participants made judgments about images of objects that were either high or low in functional manipulability (e.g., hammer vs. ladder). Using a between-subjects design, participants judged whether they had seen the object recently (Personal Experience), or could manipulate the object using their hand (Functionality). We focused on the P300 and slow-wave event-related potentials (ERPs) as reflections of attentional allocation. In both groups, we observed higher P300 and slow wave amplitudes for high-manipulability objects at electrodes Pz and C3. As P300 is thought to reflect bottom-up attentional processes, this may suggest that the processing of high-manipulability objects recruited more attentional resources. Additionally, the P300 effect was greater in the Functionality group. A more complex pattern was observed at electrode C3 during slow wave: processing the high-manipulability objects in the Functionality instruction evoked a more positive slow wave than in the other three conditions, likely related to motor simulation processes. These data provide neural evidence that effects of manipulability on stimulus processing are further mediated by automatic vs. deliberate motor-related processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Captive-born male and female squirrel monkeys spontaneously 'invented' a cup tool use technique to Contain (i.e., hold and control) food they reduced into fragments for consumption and to Contain water collected from a valve to drink. Food cup use was observed more frequently than water cup use. Observations indicate that 68% ( n = 39/57) of monkeys in this population used a cup (a plastic slip cap) to Contain food, and a subset of these monkeys, 10% ( n = 4/39), also used a cup to Contain water. Cup use was optional and did not replace, but supplemented, the hand/arm-to-mouth eating and direct valve drinking exhibited by all members of the population. Strategies monkeys used to bring food and cups together for food processing activity at preferred upper-level perching areas, in the arboreal-like environment in which they lived, provides evidence that monkeys may plan food processing activity with the cups. Specifically, prior to cup use monkeys obtained a cup first before food, or obtained food and a cup from the floor simultaneously, before transporting both items to upper-level perching areas. After food processing activity with cups monkeys rarely dropped the cups and more often placed the cups onto perching. Monkeys subsequently returned to use cups that they previously placed on perching after food processing activity. The latter behavior is consistent with the possibility that monkeys may keep cups at preferred perching sites for future food processing activity and merits experimental investigation. Reports of spontaneous tool use by squirrel monkeys are rare and this is the first report of population-level tool use. These findings offer insights into the cognitive abilities of squirrel monkeys and provide a new context for behavior studies with this genus and for comparative studies with other primates. Am. J. Primatol. 77:1323-1332, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating cognitively complex behaviours in their natural ecological context provides essential insights into the adaptive value of animal cognition. In this study, we investigated the selection of hammers used for cracking Coula nuts by wild chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes verus , in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, taking account of the availability of potential tools at the site and time of tool selection. Using GLMMs and focal follows of five adult females, we estimated the probability of an object being selected as a hammer according to its physical properties, transport distance and the location of the anvil on the ground or in trees. We found that chimpanzees took account of several variables at the same time (multidimensionality) when selecting nut-cracking tools and that their selection for hammer weight was adjusted to the state/value of other variables (conditionality). In particular, chimpanzees (1) preferred stones over wooden clubs and hard woods over soft woods; (2) selected heavy stones, but relatively lighter wooden hammers; (3) selected increasingly heavier hammers the closer they were to the anvil; and (4) selected lighter hammers when they were going to crack nuts on a tree. The latter two results represent instances of conditional tool selection based on the next steps in an operational sequence (transport and/or use of the tool in a stable or unstable location) and suggest that chimpanzees anticipated future events when they chose a tool. This large set of conditional rules suggests a high level of cognitive sophistication in a tool use task. Our results represent a compelling example of how powerful cognitive skills allow the optimization of an ecologically relevant foraging activity, supporting a food extraction hypothesis for the evolution of complex cognition in our closest relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scale errors -- futile attempts to use impossibly sized items as though they were appropriately scaled -- have been thought to exist only in young children. Here, we document a similar version of the underlying phenomenon among adults. When asked to select 1 of 2 tools to achieve an instrumental goal, adults in Study 1 frequently selected, via keypress, a tool that was "for" the goal despite the tool being clearly ill sized in the given instance. In doing so, adults ignored an alternative tool that was perfectly sized for the task. Study 2 revealed this outcome did not emerge from a shape bias. Study 3 confirmed findings using a reaching task. Results support proposals that teleofunctional (purpose-based) reasoning is a highly powerful influence on categorization and behavior across development. Toddlers' scale errors may not be a symptom of immature thinking, but reflect a type of reasoning apparent in mature cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 3 years of age, children can solve tasks involving physical principles such as locating a ball that rolled down a ramp behind an occluder by the position of a partially visible solid wall (Berthier, DeBlois, Poirer, Novak, & Clifton, 2000; Hood, Carey, & Prasada, 2000). However, the extent to which children use physical information (the properties of the wall) remains unclear because spatial information would suffice (the location of the wall in relation to the ball). We confronted 2- to 6-year-old children with a ball resting on a shelf inside a clear plastic-fronted box. To retrieve the ball, children had to roll it away from a trap or barrier using their fingers. Crucially, a .single object acted as a barrier or supporting surface in different conditions, thus requiring a flexible response. Preschoolers solved the task and the critical transfers from 2.5 years of age (Study 1). Interestingly, 2.5-year-olds required to use a tool to displace the ball performed significantly worse than those who could use their fingers (Study 2). In contrast, 2.5- to 4.5-year-olds failed a covered trap box that provided only 2-dimensional predictive cues without any visible physical information, and even 6.5-year-olds performed significantly worse on the covered task compared to the uncovered one (Studies 3 and 4). Our results suggest that children from around 2.5 years of age integrate spatial and physical information when solving problems like the trap box task, rather than simply exploit spatial relationships between features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]