the papers that studying the theory of the mind in narrative as well as those based on the theory of linguistic coherence may be able to help! Somes links:

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/publications/WPL/02papers/wilson_sperber.pdf

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00003841/document

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=rWhAAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=perception+des+incoh%C3%A9rence+du+discour&source=bl&ots=Q3V33D1QHa&sig=FKOTpBeV34YHb6tUbseD8kxvN3s&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHreX-mfjNAhXLHZAKHZMMA1wQ6AEILDAC#v=onepage&q=perception%20des%20incoh%C3%A9rence%20du%20discour&f=false

En continuant á refléchir a votre question: Je partage l'idée que l'accès á la parole se fait a travers d'un système de reconnaissance et d''activation automatique (implicite) des futurs candidats possibles á chaque moment du discours et suivant un modèle d'activation direct, ou séquentiel (Frauenfelder 1992; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1986). Dans ce sens, les interlocuteurs sont forçés á une certaine cohérence. En basculant vers une interpretation en terme de fonctions executives, j'imagine que l'activité routinière du discours est controlée par le "contention scheduling"; en situation d'incohérence je suppose que le Système Attentionel Superviseur s'active automatiquement (modèle de Shallice) et percoit l'incongruence! La trace activée ne fait pas partie des "possibles". C'est par exemple sans doute ce qui explique le retard observé (en temps de réponse) dans une tâche d'inibition cognitive (d'accès lexical incongruent avec le contexte) comme le Hayling-test ou les fluences semântiques alternées (ex: fruit-animaux). Le SAS entre en jeu pour éliminer les "possibles" et schifter sur la réponse attendue. Dans ce cas j'entends bien qu'il s'agit d'une production obligatoire incongruente mais j'imagine que les mêmes systèmes cognitifs doivent être activés pour la perception d'incongruence. Il est d'ailleurs sans doute plus difficile de faire une décision lexical (oui-non) pour un pseudo-mot entendu qui a un mot voisin fonologique proche que sans voisin possible (ex: temps pour decider si "betelle" qui est proche de Bretelle est un mot versus pour "brigotule"). J'imagine que tant pour traiter les voisins fonologique, orthografique ou sémantique un controle executif doit se mettre en place. Et le Système attentionnel Superviseur, le cas échéant, s'activera sans doute automatiquement en cas d'incongruence. On peut d'ailleurs forcé l'erreur de reconnaissance des incongruences. Dans le jeu suivant fait en auditoire : aprés avoir répondu "blanc" á la question "de quel couleur sont les objets neige, dent, papier" lorsque l'on demande "que boit la vache" certains répondront "du lait" et d'autres auront des dificultés á percevoir l'erreur.. Le mot "blanc" active les mots sémantiquement proches :le lait est de fait "blanc". Le mot "vache" active "lait-produit") , le mot "boit" active "lait-boisson" ...le mot "eau" n'est activé qu'une fois par "boit" d'ou l'erreur typique de SAS...sans doute expliquée en terme d'alteration de l' inhibition cognitive et de flexibilité. (controle des entrées sémantiquement activées non réalisé correctement).

Fini mon délire...,

Félicitation pour vos travaux,

François

check out research by Richard Gerrig at Stony Brook University and David Rapp at Northwestern University.

These are good starts, but bear in mind that different people's brains are organized differently.  Just in Western culture, ideas may be classified by their forms, by how they feel or sound, or by some set of rules.  For example, one of my colleagues mentally diagrams every sentence he hears before he responds; another claims to turn every impression into a musical piece.  And then every indigenous culture has different ways of representing their information that would seem quite foreign to us.  Discussion?

You ask: "How are we able to track conceptual inconsistencies?"

In your considerations on the topic you end up by suggesting that short term memory and long term memory are two psychological processes involved in how we are able to deal with conceptual inconsistency. However, the way you speak about these two mental processes reminds me that you conceives of memory as if it were stored in one's mind/brain. If they are stored in one's mind, then you are thinking of mind as if it were an internal, causal entity that brings about one's thinking, intending, forgetting, remembering and the like. However, to view one's mind as an internal, causal entity amounts to espousing an untenable reification. In other words, as I see it, mind is not an internal, causal entity that brings about one's thinking, intending, forgetting, remembering, and the like. What we call mind is just the set of one's acts of thinking, intending, forgetting, remembering, and so forth. To say that short term and long memories are stored in one's brain is not without problems either. Taken literally, such a sentence is gibberish because memory is not stored in one's brain as, for example, my books are stored in my office. Taken metaphorically, such a sentence is misleading for it provides an illusion of explanation when none is being provided.  Note the following:  Now, I remember that I left my car's keys in the kitchen. Does it make sense to ask in which part or region of the brain is this my act of remembering stored?  I do not think so. In other words, it is the person as a whole and embedded in a physical and social context, rather than his/her brain, who thinks, intends, pretends, remembers, forgets and the like. Of course, something different happens in the brain, electrical firings, for instance, when one remembers a recent (short term memory) or a distant (long term memory) event. This is not to claim, however, that short term and long term acts of remembering or memory are stored, say, in different regions of the brain. In other words, one’s brain is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for one’s thinking, believing, intending, forgetting and remembering.    

I know of psychologists who tackle with the problem of how we are able to track conceptual inconsistencies without appealing to an internal, causal entity called mind, or the processes of short memory and long term memory as something that is stored in one’s brain. For example, according to cognitive dissonance theory proposed by Leo Festinger [see Festinger, L (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press] there is a tendency or inclination for individuals to seek consistency or consonance among their cognitions, such as their thoughts, beliefs, or opinions. When there is an inconsistency between their beliefs, attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. This dissonance or inconsistence can be reduced in one of following three manners. First, individuals can change one or more of the attitudes, behavior, beliefs, and so forth, so as to make the relationship between the two elements a consonant or consistent one. When one of the dissonant elements is a behavior, the individual can change or eliminate the behavior. However, this manner of reducing dissonance frequently presents problems for people, because it is often difficult for people to change well-learned behaviors (e.g. to give up to smoke). A second (cognitive) manner of reducing dissonance is to acquire, or search for, new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs. For instance, thinking smoking causes lung cancer will cause dissonance if a person smokes. However, new information such as “empirical findings have not proved definitely that smoking causes lung cancer” may reduce the dissonance. A third way of reducing dissonance is to reduce the importance of the cognitions (i.e. beliefs, attitudes, and the like). An individual could convince him/herself that it is better, say, to "live for today" than to "save for tomorrow." That is, he could tell him/herself that a short life filled with sensual pleasures, smoking, for example, is preferable to a long life deprived of such pleasures. In this way, s/he would be decreasing the importance of the dissonant cognition (smoking is bad for one’s health). [See also McLeod, S. A. (2014). Cognitive Dissonance. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html.

Piaget [See Piaget, J. (1974. pp. 23-28). Recherches sur la contradiction. Vol. 2 : Les relations entre affirmations et négations [Experiments in contradiction : Relations between affirmations and negations]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France] was also concerned with the problem of conceptual inconsistencies, namely when young children are asked to solve his affirmation/negation tasks. Consider, for example, a task of a simple transfer of “N” elements from one collection to another one. First of all, the child is asked to divide, for example, a set of 12 fruit-gums into two equal collections; that is, to make two rows with the “same thing” of gums in each row. One of the rows is his/her collection. The other, the experimenter’s collection. If necessary, the experimenter places the elements in one-to-one correspondence, such that there is no doubt about children’s understanding of the problem to be solved (i.e., there is the “same thing” of fruit-gums in both rows/collections). Next, the experimenter covers his collection with a sheet of paper and the child is asked to transfer, for instance, two gums from his/her collection to the experimenter’s collection. Children are then asked the critical question of the task: “How many more gums have I got than you, and why?” If children’s answers are found to be wrong, that is, if they predict a difference of N instead of 2N elements between the two collections, the experimenter uncovers his collection such that children can see that their predictions are inconsistent with what is really the case. When confronted with this inconsistency, children are then asked to explain it -- the difference of 2N instead of N elements between the collections. Children about six years of age generally explain such unpredicted difference by “repressing”, as it were, the reality they see and often say “perhaps you have added some gums to your collection when it was covered and I couldn’t see!” or “you are a magician!”, and the like. In other words, those children do not want to accept the reality they see just because it is inconsistent with their beliefs and opinions. This, you may argue, reminds us, so to say, of a kind of “defense mechanism” a la so Freud, and the second way of dissonance reduction a la Festinger. Note that to “repress”, negate, or deny what is inconsistent with one’s thinking, beliefs, and even scientific hypotheses is an unfortunate way of reducing one’s conceptual inconsistences in psychology. This procedure, partly explains what P. Meehl once called “the slow progress of soft psychology” [See Meehl, P- (1978). Tabular asterisks and theoretical risks. Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow progress of soft psychology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 806-834].

I hope that my considerations be of help for you for one’s understanding of the interesting question you posted.

I mentioned Gerrig and Rapp because their work deals explicitly with comprehension of narratives within a cognitive science framework with regard to moment-by-moment processing, impact on memory for the specific information, and impact on processing other information in the narrative containing the inconsistencies.

If you are interested in general inconsistencies in the general environment, then there is a massive wealth of research that you can look at. Even research well over a century old on operant conditioning with a variable reinforcement schedule of rewards or punishments (sometimes the red light means one food pellet will be delivered in 20 seconds, sometimes the red light appears but no food pellet) would be applicable.

But if you are interested in conceptual inconsistencies within narratives, and specifically narratives, then Gerrig and Rapp will provide much information and will lead you to others who work in the area.

Gerrig:

http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/psychology/faculty/faculty_bio_pages/rgerrig.html

Bezdek, M. A., Gerrig, R. J., Wenzel, W. G., Shin, J., Revill, K. P., & Schumacher, E. H. (2015). Neural evidence that suspense narrows attentional focus. Neuroscience, 303, 338-345.

Foy, J. E., & Gerrig, R. J. (2014). Flying to Neverland: How readers’ tacitly judge norms during comprehension. Memory & Cognition, 42, 1250-1259.

Foy, J. E., & Gerrig, R. J. (2014). Readers’ responses when characters act on completed goals: Impact of characters’ mental states and readers’ task focus. Discourse Processes, 51, 312-332.

Rapp:

http://www.psychology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core/profiles/david-rapp.html

Bohn-Gettler, C.M., Rapp, D.N., van den Broek, P., Kendeou, P., & White, M.J. (2011). Adults’ and children’s monitoring of story events in the service of comprehension. Memory & Cognition, 39, 992-1011.

Rapp, D. N., & Kendeou, P. (2009). Noticing and revising discrepancies as texts unfold. Discourse Processes, 46, 1-24.

Rapp, D. N. (2008). How do readers handle incorrect information during reading? Memory & Cognition, 36, 688-701.

Also, Frederic Bartlett's 1932 book, Remembering, remains relevant.

The fundamental answer is: the law of contradiction (thank you Aristotle).

But one also needs conceptual clarity which means concepts tied to reality--we can thank Plato for starting the path to concepts divorced from reality which infects almost all intellectuals today-

At least for visual processing some studies (see Andrea Mechelli, Cathy J. Price, Karl J. Friston, and Alumit Ishai - Where Bottom-up Meets Top-down: Neuronal Interactions during Perception and Imagery) suggest two directional processing of perceptions:

1. Bottom-up: composing concepts from preception

2. Top-down: matching concepts to preception

There are also studies with hearing suggesting that there are comparisions working at every processing level that compare the two pathways. Some research (Kenneth Hugdahl - “Hearing voices”: Auditory hallucinations as failure of top-down control of bottom-up perceptual processes) even suggests that missing of these checks is linked to schizophrenia.

I'm not sure what studies have been done regarding stories but could imagine a similar bottom-up and top-down comparison existing.

I approach this notion of determining inconsistencies in ideas differently than previous mentioned answers. I think it first depends on whether the person has experience with the topic--if no, then inconsistencies cannot be detected (Schema + tag theory). If the person is familiar or an expert, then listening to info on the topic is processed for gist and inconsistency can be detected. Next, a person may continue listening to determine if an error actually occurred--or may seek out additional information to evaluate the error.

Detecting contradictions is, as Lauren implies, an acquired still. But it is a critical one. If there is a contradiction, both sides cannot be right though both can be wrong. But it is not just a word game. Concepts have to be tied to reality.

Here is a brief article on conceptual inconsistencies in the form of challenging the claim of "willful suspension of disbelief". It draws on the work of Richard Gerrig and others to show that there is no willful suspension of disbelief required in the acceptance of information presented in a story. Instead, the default for human information processing is to accept what is presented as the truth. It is only when an inconsistency is noticed due to conflict with a person's existing beliefs that the evaluative process is triggered for the wider story context.

Why Don't We Doubt Spider-Man's Existence? (2), Norman N Holland Ph.D., Psychology Today, 07/31/2009

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/is-your-brain-culture/200907/why-dont-we-doubt-spider-mans-existence-2

This process occurs in fictional and nonfiction narratives. Essentially, we track conceptual inconsistencies when we detect an inconsistency that relates to something important to the individual involved. This triggering of skepticism will vary in scope and duration.

A brief example of this was noted by Gary Larson, who produced the cartoon "The Far Side". He said that he received many letters following a cartoon where a male mosquito comes home and complains to his wife about his job sucking blood. The complaints were based on knowledge that it is the female mosquito that sucks blood, not the male. However, the readers of The Far Side were fine with mosquitoes that speak English, wear clothes, and live in houses.

Tracking inconsistencies requires knowledge, attention, and a personal interest in the subject matter. Even then, the scope of attention to inconsistencies will likely be limited to those that interfere with content that matters to us.