•  168
    Preschool children's use of perceptual-motor knowledge and hierarchical representational skills for tool making
    with Gökhan Gönül, Annette Hohenberger, and Ece Takmaz
    Acta Psychologica 103415 (220). 2021.
    Although other animals can make simple tools, the expanded and complex material culture of humans is unprecedented in the animal kingdom. Tool making is a slow and late-developing ability in humans, and preschool children find making tools to solve problems very challenging. This difficulty in tool making might be related to the lack of familiarity with the tools and may be overcome by children's long term perceptual-motor knowledge. Thus, in this study, the effect of tool familiarity on tool ma…Read more
  •  186
    The effect of time pressure on metacognitive control: developmental changes in self‑regulation and efficiency during learning
    with Gökhan Gönül, Nike Tsalas, and Markus Paulus
    Metacognition and Learning. forthcoming.
    The effect of time pressure on metacognitive control is of theoretical and empirical relevance and is likely to allow us to tap into developmental differences in performances which do not become apparent otherwise, as previous studies suggest. In the present study, we investigated the effect of time pressure on metacognitive control in three age groups (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and adults, n = 183). Using an established study time allocation paradigm, participants had to study two different s…Read more
  • Joint and individual tool making in preschoolers: From social to cognitive processes
    with Annette Hohenberger, Michael Corballis, and Annette M. E. Henderson
    Social Development 4 (28): 1037-1053. 2019.
    Tool making has been proposed as a key force in driving the complexity of human material culture. The ontogeny of tool‐related behaviors hinges on social, representational, and creative factors. In this study, we test the associations between these factors in development across two different cultures. Results of Study 1 with 5‐to‐6‐year‐old Turkish children in dyadic or individual settings show that tool making is facilitated by social interaction, hierarchical representation, and creative abili…Read more
  •  203
    Children’s reasoning about the efficiency of others’ actions: The development of rational action prediction
    with Gökhan Gönül and Markus Paulus
    Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 105035 (204). 2021.
    The relative efficiency of an action is a central criterion in action control and can be used to predict others’ behavior. Yet, it is unclear when the ability to predict on and reason about the efficiency of others’ actions develops. In three main and two follow-up studies, 3- to 6-year-old children (n = 242) were confronted with vignettes in which protagonists could take a short (efficient) path or a long path. Children predicted which path the protagonist would take and why the protagonist wou…Read more
  •  1
    The cognitive ontogeny of tool making in children: The role of inhibition and hierarchical structuring
    with Gökhan Gönül, Ece Kamer Takmaz, Annette Hohenberger, and Michael Corballis
    Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 1 (173): 222-238. 2018.
    During the last decade, the ontogeny of tool making has received growing attention in the literature on tool-related behaviors. However, the cognitive demands underlying tool making are still not clearly understood. In this cross-sectional study of 52 Turkish preschool children from 3 to 6 years of age, the roles of executive function (response inhibition), ability to form hierarchical representations (hierarchical structuring), and social learning were investigated with the hook task previously…Read more