A remarkable amount of perceptual development occurs in the first year after birth. In this article, we spotlight the case of color perception. We outline how within just 6 months, infants go from very limited detection of color as newborns to a more sophisticated perception of color that enables them to make sense of objects and the world around…

This study investigated the development of rapid visual object categorization. N = 20 adults (Experiment 1), N = 21 five to six-year-old children (Experiment 2), and N = 140 four-, seven-, and eleven-month-old infants (Experiment 3; all predominantly White, 81 females, data collected in 2013-2020) participated in a fast periodic visual stimulation…

Infants are curious learners who drive their own cognitive development by imposing structure on their learning environment as they explore. Understanding the mechanisms by which infants structure their own learning is therefore critical to our understanding of development. Here we propose an explicit mechanism for intrinsically motivated…

To examine key parameters of the initial conditions in early category learning, two studies compared 5-month-olds' object categorization between tasks involving previously unseen novel objects, and between measures within tasks. Infants in Experiment 1 participated in a visual familiarization-novelty preference (VFNP) task with two-dimensional…

Six-month-old infants' ("N" = 168) memory for individual items in a categorized list (e.g., images of dogs or cats) was examined to investigate the interactions between visual recognition memory, working memory, and categorization. In Experiments 1 and 2, infants were familiarized with six different cats or dogs, presented one at a time…

This article presents an eye-tracking study using a novel combination of visual saliency maps and "area-of-interest" analyses to explore online feature extraction during category learning in infants. Category learning in 12-month-olds (N = 22) involved a transition from looking at high-saliency image regions to looking at more…

The present study examined whether 6- and 9-month-old Caucasian infants could categorize faces according to race. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with different female faces from a common ethnic background (i.e. either Caucasian or Asian) and then tested with female faces from a novel race category. Nine-month-olds were able to form…

The origin of color categories has been debated by psychologists, linguists and cognitive scientists for many decades. Here, we present the first electrophysiological evidence for categorical responding to color before color terms are acquired. Event-related potentials were recorded on a visual oddball task in 7-month old infants. Infants were…

The "other-race effect" (ORE), or the finding that same-race faces are better recognized than other-race faces, is one of the best replicated phenomena in face recognition. The current article reviews existing evidence and theory and proposes a new theoretical framework for the ORE, which argues that the effect results from a confluence of social…

Aim: To relate visual field function to brain morphology in children with unilateral cerebral palsy (CP). Method: Visual field function was assessed using the confrontation technique and Goldmann perimetry in 29 children (15 males, 14 females; age range 7-17y, median age 11y) with unilateral CP classified at Gross Motor Function Classification…

One of the central themes in the study of language acquisition is the gap between the linguistic knowledge that learners demonstrate, and the apparent inadequacy of linguistic input to support induction of this knowledge. One of the first linguistic abilities in the course of development to exemplify this problem is in speech perception:…

Infants respond categorically to color. However, the nature of infants' categorical responding to color is unclear. The current study investigated two issues. First, is infants' categorical responding more absolute than adults' categorical responding? That is, can infants discriminate two stimuli from the same color category? Second, is color…

In five experiments, 14- to 15-month-old infants' categorization of objects on the basis of more or less obvious features was investigated. Using an object examining paradigm, a total of 200 infants were familiarized with novel objects that shared either more obvious features (i.e., easily visible) or less obvious features (i.e., accessible by…

Examined infants' categorization using object manipulation tasks that involved objects that were models of animals, vehicles, or furniture. Objects were normal, had anomalous moving parts (such as a dog with wheels), or had different textures. Found that 14- to 22-month olds attended to the parts and structural configuration of objects, but not to…

Used event-related potentials to determine whether infants show differences in spatial and temporal characteristics of brain activation during face and object recognition. Found that infants' experience with specific examples within categories and their general category knowledge influenced the neural correlates of visual processing. (Author/KB)