We examine the influence of inferring interlocutors' referential intentions from their body movements at the early stage of lexical acquisition. By testing human subjects and comparing their performances in different learning conditions, we find that those embodied intentions facilitate both word discovery and word-meaning association.

A recent eyetracking experiment has indicated that, while staring at a blank white display, participants engaged in imagery tend to make eye movements that mimic the directionality of spatial expressions in the speech stream (Spivey & Geng, 2000). This result is consistent with a spatial mental models account of language comprehension (e.g., Johnson-Laird, 1983), adds a motor component to evidence for activation of perceptual mechanisms during visual imagery (e.g., Kosslyn, Thompson, Kim, & Alpert, 1995), and fits with claims regarding the embodiment of cognition (e.g., Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). However, some methodological concerns remain. We report some preliminary observations, and a controlled experiment, in which these methodological concerns are resolved. We demonstrate that, even when the speech includes no instructions to imagine anything, and even when participants ’ eyes are closed, participants tend to make eye movements in the same direction (and especially along the same axis) as the described scene when listening to a spatially extended scene description..

A computational model of a user navigating Web pages was used to identify factors that affect Web site usability. The model approximates a typical user searching for specified target information in architectures of varying menu depth. Search strategies, link ambiguity, and memory capacity were varied and model predictions compared to human user data. A good fit to observed data was obtained for a model that assumed users 1) used little memory capacity; 2) selected a link whenever its perceived likelihood of success exceeded a threshold; and, 3) opportunistically searched below threshold links on selected pages prior to returning to the parent page.