Causal inferences in reading: from immediate activation to long-term memory

Three different tasks were used to investigate the time course of drawing causal inferences. Participants read passages that contained a causal coherence break that could be resolved by reactivating a concept presented earlier in the passage. In Experiment 1, participants named a probe word that represented the earlier mentioned cause more quickly after encountering the causal coherence break, suggesting that the causal concept had quickly been reactivated. In Experiment 2, participants were slow to read a sentence after the causal coherence break that contradicted the intended inference, indicating that the inference had been encoded and retained in working memory. In Experiment 3, the results of a recall task indicated that the causal link was also included in the long-term memory representation of the text.