Text comprehension after brain injury: left prefrontal lesions affect inference processes

Comprehending language in context requires inferencing, particularly for the establishment of local coherence. In the neurolinguistic literature, an inference deficit after right hemisphere brain damage has been postulated, but clinical observation and imaging data suggest that left-frontal lesions might also result in inference deficits. In the present experiment, 25 nonaphasic patients performed a coherence judgment task requiring them to indicate a pragmatic connection between 2 successively presented sentences. Patients with left-temporal or right-frontal lesions performed the task well. In contrast, patients with left- and bifrontal lesions exhibited the most severe deficit. Both error rates and response times were elevated for coherent trials as compared with incoherent trials. These results confirm that the left-frontal lobe contributes to inference processes.