Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

is commonly assumed that as a spoken linguistic message unfolds over time, it is initially processed by modules that are encapsulated from information provided by other perceptual and cognitive systems. W e were able to observe the effects of relevant visual context on the rapid mental processes that accompany spoken language comprehension by recording eye movements using a head-mounted eye-tracking system while subjects followed instructions to manipulate real objects. Under conditions that approximate an ordinary language environment, incorporating goal-directed action, the visual context influenced spoken word recognition and mediated syntactic processing, even during the earliest moments of language processing.