The determination of the appropriate interface texts for efficient menu selection, based on information retrieval from long term memory, is important to web site design. A psychological theory, the spreading activation model, is used to explain the users' information searching behavior in menu selection tasks. Two experiments were performed: a spreading activation test and an actual performance test with a real menu. In the first experiment, the degree of relatedness between two text labels in a menu was evaluated. By using two levels of menu structure, we investigated the user's search for semantically related targets and for a known target respectively. The latter was determined by target locations and the number of menu items, allowing selection time to be predicted by Fitts' law. On the other hand, the former was strongly dependent on each subject's memory, and required a significant cognitive load. As seen in the total performance measure, semantic relations of text information played an important role in menu selection. Consequently, the semantic distance for related information was strongly correlated with error rate (r²=0.740) and total menu selection time (r²=0.751). In comparing the spreading activation test with actual performance, response time in the spreading activation test also showed a strong correlation with error rate (r²=0.736) which significantly affected menu selection. This study supports the use of interface languages for certain information structures and provides a semantic approach to the design of menus.