THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFORMATION-PROCESSING AND LANGUAGE PRODUCTION

We explored the relationships between information processing and langu age in order to further the understanding of language disturbances in psychiatric patients. To assess the impact of reduced processing capac ity on language, 50 undergraduates completed an interview concurrent w ith a category monitoring task and a control interview without a concu rrent task. Syntactic complexity, verbosity, and pause patterns were a ll disrupted by a reduction in processing capacity. In addition, indiv idual differences in syntactic complexity and information processing w ere significantly associated, even after accounting for verbal intelli gence. We discuss the relevance of the results for understanding langu age disturbances in psychopathology and hypothesize that a reduction i n processing capacity may underlie the decreased syntactic complexity, decreased verbal output, and increased