Mental Health and Language: Anxiety and Depression Impact Sentence Recall Differently

Abstract

The present study examined how two mental health disorders (anxiety and depression) impact people’s ability to process language. Participants (N = 64) were asked to read and recall sentences. A secondary naming task was used to prompt lexical rehearsal of the second noun in the stimulus sentence that was either part of the subject (e.g., Tania and the glass moved…) or final phrase (e.g., ... above the glass and the donkey). Corrections during writing and recall mistakes were modelled in generalized mixed models. In line with the hypothesis that mental health disorders impair language processing, both anxiety and depression affected sentence recall accuracy but only anxiety impacted the execution process. Understanding the impact of mental health disorders on language processing is crucial to develop targeted support for individuals who would otherwise be systematically disadvantaged in educational, social, and professional life. Future research may benefit from separating samples dependent on symptom severity and comorbidity. 

Keywords: Depression, anxiety, sentence recall, mental health, language processing