Gervais & Norenzayan (2012) reported in Science a series of 4 experiments in which manipulations intended to foster analytic thinking decreased religious belief. We conducted a precise, large, multi-site pre-registered replication of one of these experiments. We observed little to no effect of the experimental manipulation on religious belief (d = 0.07 in the wrong direction, 95% CI[-0.12, 0.25], N = 941). The original finding does not seem to provide reliable or valid evidence that analytic thinking causes a decrease in religious belief.

The aim of this study was to examine whether locations of objects are encoded and available to the reader at different points in a narrative, depending on their causal relevance. Participants in five experiments read narratives in which the spatial relation between an object and its location either did or did not provide a causal explanation for a later critical event. Object and location target words were presented to the participants immediately before or after the critical event. Speeded recognition response times to target words demonstrated that both locations and objects were reactivated, but only after they became causally relevant. The results suggest that the causal structure of a text can influence the availability of spatial information and that at least some spatial relations are encoded during reading and are available to the reader when they are needed to build coherence.

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During text comprehension, individuals often need to represent information that is not explicitly stated in a text by generating inferences. To understand what cognitive processes and corresponding neural substrates are involved when individuals generate inferences, researchers have utilized neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Although relatively few fMRI studies have explicitly investigated inference making, we discuss several neuroimaging findings that we think make unique contributions to the field. Next, we discuss some issues with fMRI that make it challenging for researchers to draw conclusions. Finally, we propose several ideas that researchers could incorporate into future fMRI studies to enhance our understanding of inference generation during text comprehension.