How the Brain Processes Causal Inferences in Text

Abstract

Theoretical models of text processing, such as the construction-integration framework, pose fundamental questions about causal inference making that are not easily addressed by behavioral studies. In particular, a common result is that causal relatedness has a different effect on text reading times than on memory for the text: Whereas reading times increase linearly as causal relatedness decreases, memory for the text is best for events that are related by a moderate degree of causal relatedness and is poorer for events with low and high relatedness. Our functional magnetic resonance imaging study of the processing of two-sentence passages that varied in their degree of causal relatedness suggests that the inference process can be analyzed into two components, generation and integration, that are subserved by two large-scale cortical networks (a reasoning system in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right-hemisphere language areas). These two cortical networks, which are distinguishable from the classical left-hemisphere language areas, approximately correspond to the two functional relations observed in the behavioral results.