Abstract Previous studies have investigated how second language (L2) readers construct memory for narrative texts according to causal relations between the events described. This study aims to extend their findings by including semantic text relations (similarity of meaning) as another variable, which are theoretically expected to play an additional role in comprehension. With this aim, 121 Japanese learners of English read a set of 200-word long narratives adapted from previous studies. The causal relationships between the text statements were identified using a causal network analysis, whereas the semantic text relations were evaluated by a computational method (latent semantic analsyis). After reading the narratives, participants performed a written recall task. The results of the recall analysis confirmed that the global causal text relations influence the memory for narrative texts. The results further revealed that local semantic relations between adjacent text statements also have an impact. These findings are discussed in light of theories of discourse comprehension.

中文翻译：

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回顾第二语言读者对叙事文本的记忆：因果关系和语义文本关系的作用

摘要先前的研究已经研究了第二语言（L2）读者如何根据所描述事件之间的因果关系来构造叙事文本的记忆。这项研究旨在通过将语义文本关系（含义相似）作为另一个变量来扩展他们的发现，这在理论上有望在理解中起到额外的作用。为此，日本的121名英语学习者阅读了一系列200字长的叙述，这些叙述取材自先前的研究。文本语句之间的因果关系使用因果网络分析进行识别，而语义文本关系则通过计算方法（潜在语义分析）进行评估。阅读叙述后，参与者执行了书面回忆任务。回忆分析的结果证实，整体因果关系影响了叙事文本的记忆。结果进一步表明，相邻文本语句之间的局部语义关系也有影响。这些发现是根据话语理解理论进行讨论的。