This study aimed to investigate the relationship between lexical coverage and TV viewing comprehension. Previous studies have indicated that 95% to 98% of lexical coverage may be needed for reading comprehension (Hu & Nation, 2000). To understand informal listening passages, lower coverage figures (95%-90%) may suffice. However, no study has researched the lexical coverage needed to understand audiovisual texts. We adopted a counter-balanced within-participants design, in which 5%, 10%, or 20% of the words in four 2-min documentaries were replaced with nonwords. Native and non-native speakers of English participated in this study. Results showed that comprehension scores decreased as lexical coverage decreased; comprehension at 100% coverage was significantly higher than 90% and 80% in the two groups; and optimal adequate comprehension is achieved with an optimal lexical coverage of 95%, whereas minimal adequate comprehension is reached with a minimal lexical coverage of 80%.

As children advance through school, derived words become increasingly common in their reading materials. Previous studies have shown that children’s knowledge of derivational morphology develops relatively slowly, but there is more to learn about this development. This study examined differences in knowledge of the form and meaning of suffixes across grade levels (Grades 3, 5, and 8) and different types of derivational suffixes (adjectives and nominals). We assessed 309 English-speaking children on word reading and receptive vocabulary tests and two tasks designed to assess the form (orthographic knowledge) and meaning (semantic knowledge) of 28 derivational suffixes (14 adjectives and 14 nominals). Overall, our findings showed a significant improvement in identifying and understanding derivational suffixes from Grade 3 to Grade 5 and a smaller, but still significant, improvement from Grade 5 to Grade 8. Our findings regarding suffix types were mixed. While written forms of adjectives were identified more accurately than nominals across all grades, this advantage did not extend to the students’ understanding of the meaning of the suffixes. These results highlight the distinction between the identification of suffixes and the understanding of their meaning. We discuss our results in relation to suffix frequency in children’s reading materials.

This study examined priming in perceptual identification of orthographically illegal nonwords in control subjects and patients with global amnesia. Subjects studied a list of orthographically illegal nonwords and then performed a perceptual identification task in which half of the stimuli were from the prior study list and half were new (unstudied) stimuli. Priming was reflected in enhanced identification accuracy of studied compared to unstudied nonwords. Amnesic patients showed significant and normal priming despite impaired recognition memory performance. Because the experimental stimuli were dissimilar to real words in terms of orthography and phonology, it is unlikely that this priming effect was mediated by activation of pre-existing representations of orthographically or phonologically similar words, morphemes, or syllables. These results demonstrate that intact perceptual priming in amnesia is not limited to stimuli that are premorbidly represented in long-term knowledge, nor to novel stimuli that conform to the rules that characterize familiar items. Further, because the experimental stimuli comprised novel letter assemblies, the results suggest that amnesic patients can show normal priming for new perceptual associations. These findings demonstrate that processes spared in amnesia can support the creation and subsequent retrieval of novel stimulus representations. (JINS, 1995, I, 425–433.)