The ability to use tools is a distinguishing feature of human beings. It represents a complex psychomotor activity that we are only now beginning to comprehend. Robust new theoretical accounts allow us to better understand how people use tools and explain differences in human and animal tool use from the perspective of cognitive science. Our understanding needs to be grounded upon research into how people use tools, which draws upon many disciplines, from ergonomics to anthropology to cognitive science to neuropsychology. Cognition and Tool Use: Forms of Engagement in Human and Animal Use of Tools presents a single coherent account of human tool use as a complex psychomotor activity. It explains how people use tools and how this activity can succeed or fail, then describes the design and development of usable tools. This book considers contemporary tool use in domains such as surgery, and considers future developments in human-computer interfaces, such as haptic virtual reality and tangible user interfaces. No other single text brings together the research from the different disciplines, ranging from archaeology and anthropology to psychology and ergonomics, which contribute to this topic. Graduate students, professionals, and researchers will find this guide to be invaluable.

Janet and Charles Keller provide an account of situated learning based on the ethnographic study of blacksmithing.

The last decade has witnessed remarkable discoveries and advances in our understanding of the tool using behaviour of animals. Wild populations of capuchin monkeys have been observed to crack open nuts with stone tools, similar to the skills of chimpanzees and humans. Corvids have been observed to use and make tools that rival in complexity the behaviours exhibited by the great apes. Excavations of the nut cracking sites of chimpanzees have been dated to around 4-5 thousand years ago. Tool Use in Animals collates these and many more contributions by leading scholars in psychology, biology and anthropology, along with supplementary online materials, into a comprehensive assessment of the cognitive abilities and environmental forces shaping these behaviours in taxa as distantly related as primates and corvids.

Looks at how humans have evolved complex behaviours such as language and culture.

An overview of current research and experimental approaches in avian cognition and how this relates to other species.

Stone tools are the most durable and common type of archaeological remain and one of the most important sources of information about behaviors of early hominins. Stone Tools and the Evolution of Human Cognition develops methods for examining questions of cognition, demonstrating the progression of mental capabilities from early hominins to modern humans through the archaeological record. Dating as far back as 2.5-2.7 million years ago, stone tools were used in cutting up animals, woodworking, and preparing vegetable matter. Today, lithic remains give archaeologists insight into the forethought, planning, and enhanced working memory of our early ancestors. Contributors focus on multiple ways in which archaeologists can investigate the relationship between tools and the evolving human mind-including joint attention, pattern recognition, memory usage, and the emergence of language. Offering a wide range of approaches and diversity of place and time, the chapters address issues such as skill, social learning, technique, language, and cognition based on lithic technology. Stone Tools and the Evolution of Human Cognition will be of interest to Paleolithic archaeologists and paleoanthropologists interested in stone tool technology and cognitive evolution.

This work examines the cognitive capacity of great apes in order to better understand early man and the importance of memory in the evolutionary process. It synthesizes research from comparative cognition, neuroscience, primatology as well as lithic archaeology, reviewing findings on the cognitive ability of great apes to recognize the physical properties of an object and then determine the most effective way in which to manipulate it as a tool to achieve a specific goal. The authors argue that apes (Hominoidea) lack the human cognitive ability of imagining how to blend reality, which requires drawing on memory in order to envisage alternative future situations, and thereby modifying behavior determined by procedural memory. This book reviews neuroscientific findings on short-term working memory, long-term procedural memory, prospective memory, and imaginative forward thinking in relation to manual behavior. Since the manipulation of objects by Hominoidea in the wild (particularly in order to obtain food) is regarded as underlying the evolution of behavior in early Hominids, contrasts are highlighted between the former and the latter, especially the cognitive implications of ancient stone-tool preparation.