Inference Generation During Text Comprehension by Adults With Right Hemisphere Brain Damage

Evidence conflicts as to whether adults with right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) generate inferences during text comprehension. M. Beeman (1993) reported that adults with RHD fail to activate the lexical-semantic bases of routine bridging inferences, which are necessary for comprehension. But other evidence indicates that adults with RHD activate multiple interpretations in various comprehension domains. In addition, the activation of contextually inappropriate interpretations is prolonged for many adults with RHD and predicts poor discourse comprehension. This study contrasted Beeman's activation failure hypothesis with the prediction that adults with RHD would generate multiple interpretations in text comprehension. The relation between activation of textually incompatible inferences and discourse comprehension was also investigated for this group. Thirty-seven adults with RHD and 34 without brain damage listened to brief narratives that required a bridging inference (BI) to integrate the text-final sen...