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..

spatial representations derived from spatial language can function equivalently to those derived from perception. The authors tested functional equivalence for reporting spatial relations that were not explicitly stated during learning. Participants learned a spatial layout by visual perception or spatial language and then made allocentric direction and distance judgments. Experiments 1 and 2 indicated allocentric relations could be accurately reported in all modalities, but visually perceived layouts, tested with or without vision, produced faster and less variable directional responses than language. In Experiment 3, when participants were forced to create a spatial image during learning (by spatially updating during a backward translation), functional equivalence of spatial language and visual perception was demonstrated by patterns of latency, systematic error, and variability. People typically learn about space by means of direct perception. By viewing, hearing, touching, or moving around objects in their environment, they can form spatial representations of their physical surroundings. However, mental representations of space are not formed exclusively through direct perceptual input. They can also be constructed indirectly by means of symbolic media

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of Houston- Downtown. Dr. Andre ' de Korvin was the UH- Downtown faculty advisor. Dr. A. Glen Houston served as the RICIS research coordinator. Funding was provided by the Information Systems Directorate, NASA/JSC through Cooperative Agreement NCC 9-16 between the NASA Johnson Space Center and the University of Houston-Clear Lake. The NASA technical monitor for this activity was Dr. Robert Savely of the Information Technology Division, NASA/JSC.

Psychologists have argued that visual imagery plays a vital role in human reasoning. If so, then reasoning with materials that are easy to visualize should be better than reasoning with materials that are hard to visualize. The literature, however, reports inconsistent results. Our starting point was that the inconsistencies arise from confounding imageability with the spatial nature of the materials. Hence, we manipulated the ease of envisaging the materials as visual images and also as spatial layouts. An experiment showed that materials that are easy to visualize impair reasoning unless t hey are also easy to envisage spatially.

The present study demonstrates that, even in the absence of any visual stimulus at all, such "perceptual simulations" (Barsalou, 1999) often trigger corresponding oculomotor responses. In a sense, one might say that thinking of something often involves pretending to look at it. This finding contributes to the developing "embodied" view of the mind (e.g., Ballard, Hayhoe, Pook, & Rao, 1997; Brooks, 1995; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991), in which an adequate characterization of cognition requires special attention to the repertoire of actions available to the organism or agent.

[This paper offers an interpretation of the generational divide

The idea that concepts are embodied by our motor and sensory systems is popular in current theorizing about cognition. Embodied cognition accounts come in di¤erent versions and are often contrasted with a purely symbolic amodal view of cognition. Simulation, or the hypothesis that concepts simulate the sensory and motor experience of real world encounters with instances of those concepts, has been prominent in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Here, with a focus on spatial thought and language, I review some of the evidence cited in support of simulation versions of embodied cognition accounts. While these data are extremely interesting and many of the experiments are elegant, knowing how to best interpret the results is often far from clear. I point out that a quick acceptance of embodied accounts runs the danger of ignoring alternate hypotheses and not scrutinizing neuroscience data critically. I also review recent work from my lab that raises questions about the nature of sensory motor grounding in spatial

An alternative model for the aetiology of depression