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Prior research suggests that human children lack an aptitude for tool innovation. However, children's tool making must be explored across a broader range of tasks and across diverse cultural contexts before we can conclude that they are genuinely poor tool innovators. To this end, we investigated children's ability to independently construct 3 new tools using distinct actions: adding, subtracting, and reshaping. We tested 422 children across a broad age range from 5 geographic locations across South Africa (N = 126), Vanuatu (N = 190), and Australia (N = 106), which varied in their levels of exposure to Westernized culture. Children were shown a horizontal, transparent tube that had a sticker in its middle. Children were sequentially given each incomplete tool, which when accurately constructed could be used to push the sticker out of the tube. As predicted, older children were better at performing the innovation tasks than younger children across all cultures and innovation actions. We also found evidence for cultural variation: While all non-Western groups performed similarly, the Western group of children innovated at higher rates. However, children who did not innovate often adopted alternate methods when using the tools that also led to success. This suggests that children's innovation levels are influenced by the cultural environment, and highlights the flexibility inherent in human children's tool use.

Successful management of complex food systems inherently requires societal engagement. A major barrier is the misalignment between high-level generalized scientific representations of the urban food system and the varying practical perspectives of the actors embedded within it. To bridge this gap, participatory approaches can help in collecting and structuring knowledge from food system actors in a way that is understood by people with a diversity of experiences. Here, we showcase an approach to collect and synthesize diverse actor perspectives on the functioning of the urban food system in Worcester, a secondary city in South Africa. Together with six different groups of actors (N = 18) we built conceptual models of the urban food system and synthesized them into a full conceptual urban food system model. Our results show large differences in actor perspectives of the food system, including several (informal) subsystems that are often ignored in formal scientific food system models. Differences between actors in representation and in deemed importance of food system components can inform joint learning about the urban food system and enhance collaboration in finding food system solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]