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Research on infants' early development of aesthetic perception has focused on their ability to discriminate and evaluate auditory stimuli such as musical intervals or faces differing along their level of attractiveness. However, infants' discriminatory and evaluative responses in the domain of the visual arts have, as of today, not been examined. Artistic paintings are complex visual stimuli. Multiple cues such as color, style of brushing, common subjects, and others must be considered to discriminate and evaluate paintings from different artists. The authors examined infants' visual attention to works of 2 painters, namely Picasso and Monet. Results suggest that infants discriminate and categorize different paintings t • but that they display a spontaneous preference for paintings by Picasso.

Recent research suggests that 12‐month‐old infants use shape to individuate the number of objects present in a scene. This study addressed the question of whether infants would also rely on shape when shape is only a temporary attribute of an object. Specifically, we investigated whether infants realize that shape changes reliably indicate identity changes only in the case of rigid objects, but not in the case of deformable plastic objects. Twelve‐month‐old infants observed how either a rigid or a plastic object was placed in a box. When searching the box, they retrieved either an object with the same (no‐switch event) or with a different shape (switch event). Infants correctly inferred two distinct objects in the switch event in the case of rigid objects, but not in the case of plastic objects. A control experiment confirmed that this result was not due to a lack of salience of the shape transformation. Thus, infants' re‐searching behavior indicated that they viewed shape as being diagnostic in the individuation process of rigid objects only.

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