Models of stereoscopic depth perception for both natural and random-dot images have focused mainly on the matching of achromatic features of binocular images. Recently, a growing body of research has investigated whether chromatic features can also contribute to the construction of stereoscopic depth. Here we present experiments yielding color-contingent depth aftereffects comparable in magnitude to those measured after adaptation to achromatic stimuli as evidence of neural mechanisms tuned to both color and depth. Furthermore, we report that the locus of the combined processing of color and depth is likely to lie beyond the site of binocular matching.

In adults, stimuli associated with reward capture attention, even when task-irrelevant, resulting in distraction (Awhet al., 2012). Here we examine whether rewarded stimuli capture attention in 2-year-old children. Toddlers (N = 46, mean age:28;10, range: 19;16 - 36;18) performed a visual search task where the target switched between blocks. Search arrays consistedof the current target, a previous target, and six feature conjunction distractors. On each trial, the current target was cued, andfollowing a fixed search period, rotated as a reward. We used a Tobii T120 eye-tracker to record toddlers’ eye-movements.Following a target switch, toddlers fixated the current target before the previous target, despite the previous target’s recentreward history F(1, 44) = 31.183, p < 0.001). Our study is one of the first to investigate the early development of reward-basedattentional selection.

Preschool-age children show essentialism (Gelman, 2003), ascribing an essence to an object that includes its history, and which can determine behavior. While infants show the precursors of essentialism, such as maintaining object representations during naturalistic occlusion (6-month-olds; Kaufman, Csibra, & Johnson, 2005), and resisting individuating two disparate appearances of an object when shown that one can change into the other (14-month-olds; Cacchione, Schaub, & Rakoczy, 2013), the implicit precursors of essentialist reasoning in infants have not been directly studied. Here we tested whether young infants could use an object’s prior history to predict its behavior, even after it had changed into a novel shape. Critically, the object either smoothly morphed into the novel shape (facilitating an essentialist interpretation) or was replaced by a new shape (discouraging essentialist interpretation). Results showed that 9-month-old infants (N = 22) in the Morph condition predicted the novel object would have the same behavior as the pre- transformation object; an essentialist interpretation. However, in the Replace condition (N = 22), predictions for the novel object were at chance; infants seemed to have lost the link to the pre-transformation object. Furthermore, results from a group of 6-month-olds (N = 15) showed that they failed to maintain this link, even in the Morph condition (which may indicate a failure to apply essentialist reasoning, or, more likely, a failure to adequately remember the pre-transformation object and/or apply the matching rule to predict post- transformation behavior).

Human adults are extremely good at inferring the overall meaning of scenes in a single glanceÑtheir gistÑsuch as "a park" or "a kitchen". However, little is known about categorical knowledge of scenes and the extraction of scene gist in development. In two preferential-looking experiments, we investigated whether 12- and 18-month-old infants categorize scenes based on gist and the role that verbal input plays in extracting such conceptual commonality. Whereas 12-month-olds showed no evidence of scene categorization, 18-month-olds categorized scenes when the images were presented with a label void of meaning in the familiarization phase. The observed facilitating effect of language on categorization, previously already shown in studies with objects, seems to emerge at a later age for scenes, possibly due to their inherent complexity. Our findings show for the first time that by the age of 18 months, infants can categorize visual scenes based on abstract commonalities.