Abstract The current study explored the unconventional use of a familiar tool (a spoon) in infants during the second year of life. Infants between 14 and 18 months of age were given a task requiring an unconventional grasp of a spoon (at its bowl) and inserting its handle into a box’s hole. Success in this task requires infants to inhibit their conventional action plan (grasping the spoon’s handle) and instead perform the task as demonstrated by the experimenter at the beginning of the trial (grasping the spoon’s bowl). Prior research had revealed that infants in this age range had a low success rate in this task. To investigate the possibility that infants’ difficulty in the task was related to their inability to inhibit the well-practiced conventional grasping behavior (e.g., grasping the spoon’s handle), the tools (the spoon and a novel tool on different trials) were presented in a holder that restricted grasping to the bowl of the tools, and on the table that did not restrict the grasping of the tools. The study measures included overall success, time taken to succeed, as well as the grasping strategies used by infants during the task. Parents responded to questions about their infant’s effortful/inhibitory control and prior experience with spoons; associations between these measures and infants’ performance on the tool task were obtained. Our data revealed that type of tool (spoon or novel tool) and method of presentation (in the holder or on the table) were reliable predictors of infants’ success in the task. In addition, infants who had greater active use of spoons at home, as well as better inhibitory control showed more appropriate grasping of tools and required less time to successfully complete the task.

中文翻译：

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婴儿非常规工具的使用：在生命的第二年以新颖的方式使用熟悉的工具

摘要 本研究探讨了婴儿在出生后第二年对熟悉的工具（勺子）的非常规使用。14 至 18 个月大的婴儿接受一项任务，需要非常规地抓住勺子（在碗上）并将其把手插入盒子的孔中。这项任务的成功需要婴儿抑制他们的常规行动计划（抓住勺子的把手），而是像实验者在试验开始时展示的那样（抓住勺子的碗）执行任务。先前的研究表明，这个年龄段的婴儿在这项任务中的成功率很低。为了调查婴儿在任务中的困难与他们无法抑制习以为常的常规抓握行为（例如，抓握勺柄）有关的可能性，工具（勺子和不同试验中的一种新工具）被放置在一个限制抓握工具碗的支架上，以及不限制抓握工具的桌子上。研究测量包括总体成功、成功所需的时间以及婴儿在任务中使用的抓取策略。父母回答了有关他们婴儿的努力/抑制控制和先前使用勺子的经验的问题；获得了这些措施与婴儿在工具任务上的表现之间的关联。我们的数据显示，工具的类型（勺子或新工具）和展示方法（在支架上或在桌子上）是婴儿在任务中成功的可靠预测因素。此外，在家中更积极使用勺子的婴儿，