Compensatory effect of general cognitive skills on non-literal language processing in schizophrenia: A preliminary study E. Varga a, * ,1 , Zs. Schnell b,1 , T. Tényi a , N. Németh a , M. Simon a , A. Hajnal a , R.A. Horváth c, d , E. Hamvas a , R. Járai b , S. Fekete a , R. Herold a a Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, Medical School, University of Pécs, Rét utca 2., Pécs 7623, Hungary b Department of Linguistics and Institute of Psychology, University of Pécs, Hungary c Neuro CT Diagnostic Center, Pécs, Hungary d Department of Neurology, Medical Faculty, University of Pécs, Hungary article info Article history: Received 12 August 2013 Received in revised form 28 December 2013 Accepted 2 January 2014 Keywords: Schizophrenia Pragmatic Non-literal language IQ Theory of mind abstract Studies show that patients with schizophrenia have problems with understanding non-literal language, presumably due to theory of mind (ToM) dysfunction, while literal language processing remains intact in these patients. Furthermore, studies about the influence of general intelligence on non-literal language processing show incongruent results in schizophrenia. In the present study, our aim was to identify the influence of good intellectual skills (that is, good neurocognitive skills in general) on non-literal language comprehension on a preliminary sample of schizophrenic patients. 19 patients with schizophrenia and 19 healthy controls (carefully matched for all subtests of WAIS) completed different language tasks in the form of an interview, including conventional and un- conventional metaphors, irony, Gricean implicatures, control implicatures and semantics. In the case of the Gricean implica- tures, the comprehension of the linguistic incongruity of the ut- terance and also the comprehension of the intended meaning of the speaker were examined separately. To explore the effect of IQ on non-literal language comprehension, we divided the schizo- phrenia group into a lower-IQ (IQ  106) and a higher-IQ (IQ > 106) subgroup by making a median split (median IQ ¼ 106). * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ36 72 535900; fax: þ36 72 535951. E-mail addresses: varga.eszter@pte.hu, eszter.varga@kk.pte.hu (E. Varga). 1 The first two authors contributed equally to this work. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Neurolinguistics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ jneuroling 0911-6044/$ – see front matter Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2014.01.001 Journal of Neurolinguistics 29 (2014) 1–16