When we witness other people moving about in the world, we are able to easily interpret the flow of movement as a series of discrete actions. Further, we are generally able to """"""""read others' minds"""""""" - that is, to discern the intentions that motivated their actions. Action analysis, including segmenting and interpreting the action stream, is implicated in a number of domains important to development, including language (e.g., Baldwin, 1991), and moral judgment (Baird & Astington, 2004). Deficits in action analysis skills may lead to aggression (e.g., Dodge, 1980; Orobrio de Castro, Veerman, Koops, Bosch, & Monshouwer, 2002) and are apparent in autism (Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, & Cohen, 2000). Infants are typically analyzing actions skillfully from quite a young age (e.g., Meltzoff, 1995; Tomasello, 2004; Woodward, 1998). One possible mechanism supporting their development of action analysis skills is the infant-directed (ID) speech they hear while witnessing action. ID speech (e.g., Fernald & Mazzie, 1991; Snow, 1972), ID action (Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn, 2002) and ID speech-action synchrony (Gogate, Bahriek, & Watson, 2000) have all been documented, but as yet, the contributions of these specialized forms of input to infants' action-processing skills have not been investigated, and this is the focus of the current proposal. The studies proposed here will explore infants' responses to one type of ID input: ID narration, that is, ID speech that accompanies ongoing action. Study 1 examines whether infants recognize correspondences between action and the narration that co-occurs with it. Study 2 asks whether infants are better able to parse, or segment, dynamic action if they have previously viewed such action accompanied by an ID narration, relative to viewing the action in silence. All procedures make minimal demands on infants, simply measuring infants' looking toward video stimuli. Systematic differences in looking times to, one. type, of stimulus over another will indicate that infants discriminate between the different conditions displayed. ? ? ?
