This study examined the effect on oral task performance of manipulating cognitive task complexity along resource directing (+ intentional reasoning) and dispersing (-planning time) dimensions. Eighteen learners participate in doctor-patient role plays. Learners’ language production was measured via syntactic complexity, accuracy and fluency. Results reveal no significant effect for task complexity on performance, however there was slightly more complex speech produced by learners in the complex task which consisted of intentional reasoning demands and no planning time prior to completing the task. Two factors potentially contributing to the insignificant effect for task complexity are the large amount of individual variation as well as a possible task repetition effect. This study was presented at the 16th Annual Hispanic Linguistics Symposium in 2014.