Right and left hemisphere cooperation for drawing predictive and coherenceinferences during normal story comprehension

In three experiments, healthy young participants listened to stories promot ing inferences and named inference-related test words presented to the righ t visual field-Left Hemisphere (rvf-LH) or to the left visual field-Right H emisphere (Ivf-RH). Participants showed priming for predictive inferences o nly for target words presented to the Ivf-RH; in contrast, they showed prim ing for coherence inferences only for target words presented to the rvf-LH. These results, plus the fact that patients with RH brain damage have diffi culty drawing coherence inferences and do not show inference-related primin g, suggest that information capable of supporting predictive inferences is more likely to be initially activated in the RH than the LH, but following coherence breaks these concepts (now coherence inferences) are completed in the LH. These results are consistent with the theory that the RH engages i n relatively coarse semantic coding, which aids full comprehension of disco urse. (C) 2000 Academic Press.