Factors affecting the recreation of a story from a text: A cross-cultural experiment

In this research, we regard a text as a written expression about an extraordinary
experience in which the socio-economic, cultural and historical background of an
author affects the way this experience is translated into a text that tells the story. From this perspective, the task of a reader is to recreate the story embedded in a written text. A central question that pops up is to what extent a (mis)match between the background of a story and a reader affects the recreation process. This question can be framed within information processing theories that indicate that a recreation process is affected by motivation and ability to read this text. Furthermore, a mismatch affects the ability (conceptualized within schema theory) to recreate a story negatively.
In order to investigate this thesis, we conducted a cross-cultural study (Netherlands, Russia, Morocco) in which each student read one of three short real texts (random assignment) concerning a World War II story situated in the following geographic areas: The Netherlands, Russia and Morocco. Afterwards they filled in a reading comprehension test and a questionnaire about reading motivation, and ability to recreate the story.
The results indicate that reading motivation affects reading comprehension
positively. Reading ability (formal schema and content schema) affects comprehension in a complex way: some aspects affect basic levels of comprehension while others affect advanced levels of comprehension. Furthermore, the results reveal a consistent interaction effect between text and geographic area of a respondent. However, no evidence is found for the hypothesis that a match between background of a story and a reader results in higher comprehension scores.