Shari Liu¹, Chaz Firestone¹, Tal Boger¹; ¹Johns Hopkins University

Perception often confronts us with the distinction between *content*—what something is—and *form*—how it appears or is represented. For example, the same letter may appear in different typefaces, the same tool may be made of different materials, and the same body may take on different poses. Perhaps the richest example of this distinction arises in visual art: When viewing a painting, for example, we can discern not only what is depicted (e.g., a mountain or a sunset) but also the *manner* in which it is depicted (e.g., an impressionist sketch or a realistic portrayal). What are the origins of our capacity to distinguish content and form? And how might this capacity change throughout development? Artistic style presents an intuitive way to pit content against form, making it a useful case study for these questions. Here, in 3 experiments, we introduced participants to artists who produced various scenes with distinct contents and styles (e.g., a mountain sketched with crayons vs. a beach rendered as a detailed comic). Participants then saw a critical third scene whose content matched one artist’s drawing but whose style matched the other, and were asked which artist produced this critical scene. Whereas adults attributed the critical scene to an artist based on style (responding, e.g., that the crayon artist produced the new crayon scene, even with differing content; Experiment 1), children aged 4-7 years behaved *oppositely*, attributing based on content (responding, e.g., that the mountain artist produced the mountain scene, even with differing style; Experiment 2). We also replicated this pattern on LookIt, an online platform for collecting developmental data (Experiment 3). This work supports two conclusions: (1) The capacity to distinguish content from form arises early; but (2) the way this capacity is applied shifts throughout development.

Acknowledgements: NSF BCS 2021053, NSF GRFP