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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2008.01.004 Byline: Satoru Saito (a), Robert H. Logie (b), Aiko Morita (c), Anna Law (b) Keywords: Working memory; Visual serial recall; Visual similarity; Phonological similarity; Articulatory suppression Abstract: In a series of three experiments, native speakers of Japanese performed serial ordered written recall of visually presented Japanese kanji characters that varied systematically in visual and phonological similarity. Overall effects of phonological similarity were observed for retention of serial order under silent reading in Experiments 1 and 3 and they disappeared in articulatory suppression conditions in Experiments 2 and 3. All three experiments showed main effects of visual similarity even in articulatory suppression conditions in Experiments 2 and 3. This indicated spontaneous use of visual codes in immediate serial recall. It is suggested that any models of serial order memory should incorporate domain specificity. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Cognitive Psychology in Education, Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan (b) University of Edinburgh, UK (c) Fukuoka University of Education, Japan Article History: Received 6 August 2007; Revised 22 January 2008

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.07.009 Byline: Yukio Maehara, Satoru Saito Keywords: Working memory; Working memory span; Reading span; Stimulus order effect Abstract: In working memory (WM) span tests, participants maintain memory items while performing processing tasks. In this study, we examined the impact of task processing requirements on memory-storage activities, looking at the stimulus order effect and the impact of storage requirements on processing activities, testing the processing time effect in WM span tests. The stimulus order effect is a phenomenon whereby span scores are higher when span lists end with a shorter task than when they end with a longer task. The processing time effect refers to the phenomenon whereby the processing speed slows for the later processing positions in a list in WM span tests when participants have more memory items to remember. Two experiments demonstrated the domain-specific nature of the stimulus order effect, which was observed only when the processing and storage materials were in the same domain (either verbal or visuospatial domains), and the domain-general nature of the processing time effect, which was observed with any combination of processing and storage materials. Although the domain specificity of the stimulus order effect is compatible with the representation-based interference view proposed by Saito and Miyake [Saito, S., & Miyake, A. (2004). On the nature of forgetting and the processing-storage relationship in reading span performance. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 425-443.], the domain generality of the processing time effect is inconsistent with their account and indicates the involvement of a central bottleneck in WM span performance. Author Affiliation: Department of Cognitive Psychology in Education, Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan Article History: Received 28 December 2005; Revised 26 July 2006 Article Note: (footnote) [star] Yukio Maehara and Satoru Saito, Department of Cognitive Psychology in Education, Kyoto University. This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Project Number 14710082) and by the Canon Foundation in Europe to S.S.

The nature of forgetting and the processing-storage relationship during reading span performance is examined. The critical factor underlying the sentence order effect is the amount of processing activities while the number of memory items had a subtle and negative effect on reading times.

Position-element association has been extensively investigated as a mechanism for serial order memory and has been widely implemented in models of short-term memory. This study examined whether and how the position-element association is learned as a form of long-term knowledge dissociated from other forms of knowledge such as sequence knowledge acquired in the Hebb list repetition paradigm. Laboratory learning experiments demonstrated that repeated exposure to a specific position-element association facilitated subsequent recall of the position-element association with experimental control of other aspects of to-be-learned statistical structure of the artificial phonotactics. The experiments also demonstrated that the positional frequency learning was more gradual than Hebb list learning, suggesting a dissociation of the two forms of learning. Functional roles of these two forms of learning were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of short-term serial order memory have suggested that the maintenance of order information does not involve domain-specific processes. We carried out two dual-task experiments aimed at resolving several ambiguities in those studies. In our experiments, encoding and response of one serial reconstruction task was embedded within encoding and response of a concurrent serial reconstruction task. Order demands in both tasks were independently varied so as to find revealing patterns of interference between the two tasks. In Experiment 1, participants were to maintain and reconstruct the order of a list of verbal materials, while maintaining a list of spatial materials or vice-versa. Increasing the order demands in the outer reconstruction task resulted in small or non-reliable performance decrements in the embedded reconstruction task. Experiment 2 sought to compare these results against two same-domain baseline conditions (two verbal lists or two spatial lists). In all conditions, increasing order demands in the outer task resulted in small or non-reliable performance decrements in the embedded task. However, performance in the embedded tasks was generally lower in the same-domain baseline conditions than in the cross-domain conditions. We argue that the main effect of domain in Experiment 2 indicates the contribution of domain-specific processes to short-term serial order maintenance. In addition, we interpret the failure to find consistent cross-list interference irrespective of domain as indicating the involvement of grouping mechanisms in concurrently performed serial order tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As alternatives to the expensive liver biopsy for assessing liver fibrosis stage in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), we directly compared the diagnostic abilities of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), vibration-controlled transient elastography (VCTE), and two-dimensional shear wave elastography (2D-SWE). Overall, 231 patients with biopsy-proven NAFLD were included. Intra- and inter-observer reproducibility was analyzed using intraclass correlation coefficient in a sub-group of 70 participants, in whom liver stiffness measurement (LSM) was performed by an elastography expert and an ultrasound expert who was an elastography trainee on the same day. Valid LSMs were obtained for 227, 220, 204, and 201 patients using MRE, VCTE, 2D-SWE, and all three modalities combined, respectively. Although the area under the curve did not differ between the modalities for detecting stage ≥1, ≥2, and ≥3 liver fibrosis, it was higher for MRE than VCTE and 2D-SWE for stage 4. Sex was a significant predictor of discordance between VCTE and liver fibrosis stage. Skin-capsule distance and the ratio of the interquartile range of liver stiffness to the median were significantly associated with discordance between 2D-SWE and liver fibrosis stage. However, no factors were associated with discordance between MRE and liver fibrosis stage. Intra- and inter-observer reproducibility in detecting liver fibrosis was higher for MRE than VCTE and 2D-SWE. MRE, VCTE, and 2D-SWE demonstrated excellent diagnostic accuracy in detecting liver fibrosis in patients with NAFLD. MRE demonstrated the highest diagnostic accuracy for stage 4 detection and intra- and inter-observer reproducibility. UMIN Clinical Trials Registry No. UMIN000031491. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Differentiating primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and sclerosing cholangitis caused by autoimmune pancreatitis (SC-AIP) is often challenging. Recently, endoscopic findings of the duodenal papilla in cases with AIP or PSC were reported by Unno and Parlak, although the endoscopic differentiation of these 2 conditions has not yet been fully clarified. Objective: Our purpose was to clarify the endoscopic findings of the duodenal papilla in patients with SC-AIP and those with PSC and to determine criteria for the differentiation of these conditions. Design: Case series. Setting: Retrospective. Patients: Twenty-seven patients with SC-AIP and 12 patients with PSC who had undergone ERCP were identified from our database. We reviewed these records to determine whether the duodenal papillary findings (swollen papilla/normal papilla/small papilla) might be potentially useful for differentiating SC-AIP and PSC. Immunohistopathological findings for the duodenal papilla were also examined by using immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4) among the infiltrating plasma cells. Interventions: ERCP, biopsy specimen taken from duodenal papilla. Main Outcome Measurements: The presence of a swollen duodenal papilla with IgG4-positive plasma cells was useful for discriminating SC-AIP from with PSC. Results: A swollen duodenal papilla was observed in 63% (17/27) of the patients with SC-AIP, whereas there was no swelling of the duodenal papilla of the patients with PSC. A small papilla was recognized in 50% (6/12) of the patients with PSC. IgG4-positive plasma cells in the duodenal papilla were significantly detected in the patients with SC-AIP but not in the patients with PSC. Limitation: Single-center study. Conclusions: Characteristic duodenal endoscopic papillary features in patients with SC-AIP, such as a swollen duodenal papilla and positive immunostaining for IgG4, might be helpful for discriminating this condition from PSC. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: The rates of spontaneous remission and relapse of autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) are not known. Objective: To study the clinicopathologic factors predictive of remission and relapse in cases of AIP. Design: Retrospective study. Patients: Of the 20 patients with AIP, complete response to steroid therapy was recognized in 12 patients, and the remaining 8 patients improved without steroid therapy. Seven patients experienced a relapse. Results: Patients who were seronegative for immunoglobulin (Ig) G4, had no obstructive jaundice, no diabetes mellitus, no swelling of the duodenal papilla, negative staining of the duodenal papilla for IgG4, and focal pancreatic swelling showed a greater tendency toward spontaneous remission (P < .05). The results of multivariate analysis revealed that negative staining of the duodenal papilla for IgG4 was the only independent predictor of spontaneous remission of AIP (odds ratio [OR] 1.395, P = .0304). Seropositivity for IgG4, diffuse swelling of the pancreas, and the presence of stricture in the lower part of the bile duct were significantly associated with a relapse of AIP (P < .05) according to the results of univariate analysis, whereas the results of multivariate analysis revealed only diffuse pancreatic swelling as an independent predictor of a relapse of AIP (OR 26.197, P = .0331). Conclusions: Endoscopic findings are of useful prognostic value, because patients with AIP and with negative staining of the duodenal papilla for IgG4 appeared to have a higher frequency of remission without steroid therapy. Patients with AIP and with diffuse pancreatic swelling were found to be at an increased risk of relapse after the initial steroid administration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study investigated the effects of association values and the influences of prosodic information on Japanese children''s repetition of nonwords with varying association values and with or without pitch accent. Fifteen 3- and 4-year-olds (mean age=4.42 years, range: 3.9–4.9) and nineteen 5- and 6-year-olds (mean age=5.71 years, range: 5.1–6.1) participated in this experiment. Concerning the nonword repetition scores, an effect of association value was found only in older children for consonants of nonwords only, whereas the effect of accent pattern was observed only in young children for both consonants and vowels of nonwords. The occurrences of both effects were connected to differences in the ages of the children and the types of phoneme in nonwords. We interpret these results in the context of the framework of phonological working memory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background & Aims Noninvasive methods have been evaluated for the assessment of liver fibrosis and steatosis in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We compared the ability of transient elastography (TE) with the M-probe, and magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) to assess liver fibrosis. Findings from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)−based proton density fat fraction (PDFF) measurements were compared with those from TE-based controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) measurements to assess steatosis. Methods We performed a cross-sectional study of 142 patients with NAFLD (identified by liver biopsy; mean body mass index, 28.1 kg/m 2 ) in Japan from July 2013 through April 2015. Our study also included 10 comparable subjects without NAFLD (controls). All study subjects were evaluated by TE (including CAP measurements), MRI using the MRE and PDFF techniques. Results TE identified patients with fibrosis stage ≥2 with an area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve value of 0.82 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.74−0.89), whereas MRE identified these patients with an AUROC curve value of 0.91 (95% CI: 0.86−0.96; P = .001). TE-based CAP measurements identified patients with hepatic steatosis grade ≥2 with an AUROC curve value of 0.73 (95% CI: 0.64−0.81) and PDFF methods identified them with an AUROC curve value of 0.90 (95% CI: 0.82−0.97; P < .001). Measurement of serum keratin 18 fragments or alanine aminotransferase did not add value to TE or MRI for identifying nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Conclusions MRE and PDFF methods have higher diagnostic performance in noninvasive detection of liver fibrosis and steatosis in patients with NAFLD than TE and CAP methods. MRI-based noninvasive assessment of liver fibrosis and steatosis is a potential alternative to liver biopsy in clinical practice. UMIN Clinical Trials Registry No. UMIN000012757. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]