In discourse comprehension, we need to draw inferences to make sense of discourse. Previous neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural correlates of causal inferences in discourse understanding. However, these findings have been divergent, and how these types of inferences are related to causal inferences in logical problem-solving remains unclear. Using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach, the current meta-analysis analyzed 19 experiments on causal inferences in discourse understanding and 20 experiments on those in logical problem-solving to identify the neural correlates of these two cognitive processes and their shared and distinct neural correlates. We found that causal inferences in discourse comprehension recruited a left-lateralized frontotemporal brain system, including the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), while causal inferences in logical problem-solving engaged a nonoverlapping brain system in the frontal and parietal cortex, including the left inferior frontal gyrus, the bilateral middle frontal gyri, the dorsal MPFC, and the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Furthermore, the pattern similarity analyses showed that causal inferences in discourse understanding were primarily related to the terms about language processing and theory-of-mind processing. Both types of inferences were found to be related to the terms about memory and executive function. These findings suggest that causal inferences in discourse understanding recruit distinct neural bases from those in logical problem-solving and rely more on semantic knowledge and social interaction experiences.

No abstract

The role of working memory (WM) components, such as phonological loop, in online inferential processing has thus far not been empirically examined with a dual‐task paradigm. The current study used an online method to examine the effects of the two components of phonological loop—the articulatory rehearsal device and the phonological store device—on online causal inference generation during Chinese text reading. Eighty‐five Chinese university students read three‐sentence inference and control texts and responded to comprehension questions related to targeted inferences in different reading conditions. The results showed that in the articulatory suppression condition, response times (RTs) for comprehension questions of inference texts were considerably longer, and response errors were significantly higher than those in the normal reading condition, which indicated the effects of the articulatory rehearsal device on readers' online causal inference processes during Chinese text reading. Moreover, RTs for comprehension questions of inference texts in the irrelevant speech condition were significantly shorter than those in the normal reading condition, suggesting effects of the phonological store device on readers' causal inference processes during reading. Taken together, these findings indicate that the articulatory rehearsal device plays an important role in inference processes, but readers allocate more cognitive resources to facilitate the construction of causal relations during text‐based inferential comprehension when function of the phonological store device is impaired.