Effects of nonlinguistic knowledge on language production

In Part 1 of the experiment described herein, Ss wrote descriptions of the second panel of two-panel cartoons. Half of the cartoons were immediately preceded by the appropriate first panel and half were not. In Part 2, Ss described single-panel cartoons for one of two types of readers: (1) a person who could not see the cartoon or (2) a person looking at the cartoon with S but not “getting it.” Both manipulations gave the predicted results. Ss who saw panel 2 after panel 1 and Ss who could assume common perceptual information with the reader wrote shorter descriptions and used fewer definite articles than Ss who saw panel 2 only and Ss who could not assume common perceptual information. Results are used to argue against linguistic-object theories and for an interactive theory of the higher mental processes.