The Emergence of an Action System: The Organization of Gaze in Creating Novel Tools

This exploratory study examined the role of gaze in the emergence of a new action system for tool making. We designed an experiment in which a novel tool had to be created. Participants had to perform a task that required them to construct a tool for scooping, prodding, or cutting from a set of objects. We monitored gaze and the objects manipulated over learning. Performance got more efficient across Trials A through C: trial duration as well as the number of fixations decreased, whereas the goal-directedness of gaze (i.e., the percentage of fixations directed at the objects ultimately used in tool construction) increased. Trial A had only a few goal-directed fixations before trial-and-error constructing commenced. In Trial B the goal-directedness also started low but increased sharply during subsequent exploration. In Trial C, gaze was highly goal directed from the start and construction started immediately. This demonstrated that early in learning gaze is part of exploratory and performatory acts over a short time span, whereas later in learning gaze served a behavioral unit of a longer timescale. Gaze therefore gets organized to accommodate a new functional unit of action.