According to the perception-action perspective of development, human tool use is the result of object-to-surface affordance discovery subsequent to self-guided object and surface explorations (Gibson & Pick; Lockman, 2000; Siegler, 1996; Smitsman, 1997). However, because tools are often made with a specific purpose, learning to use them is also largely influenced by culture, suggesting that social learning is as valuable to meaningful affordance discovery as teaching oneself (Tomasello, 1999). In line with the perception-action view, with the attainment of greater physical and cognitive capability, infants are expected to better approximate and better understand the value of imitating the actions of others. Because meaningful tool use emerges around the start of the second year, the current study investigated how 14- and 18-month-old Chinese and American infants differ in their exploration strategy, whether self- or other-guided, when presented with a simple tool use task. The findings suggest that important developmental gains are made between 14 and 18 months of age, particularly in social-cognition, as older infants are more likely to imitate an adult demonstration compared to younger infants
