[Determinants of occurrence of negative priming for novel shapes with matching paradigm].

We examined the effect of relation between interferences from distractor and inhibitory mechanism on the occurrence of negative priming, by using a matching paradigm. The ease of perceptual target selection was determined by magnitudes of interference. Stereoscopic depth was used to manipulate the relative position of a target, a distractor and a standard figure. When the ease of perceptual target selection was manipulated by separation of the target from the distractor in depth, positive priming occurred. However, the ease of target selection turned out to be unnecessary in the occurrence of priming effects. When the distractor and the standard figure were displayed at the same depth plane, where the distractor was supposed to interfere with the encoding of a standard figure, negative priming occurred consistently regardless of the ease of perceptual target selection. This study suggests that inhibitory mechanism contributes to the suppression of inappropriate processes by distractor, and inhibitory mechanism actively keeps distractors from interfering with standard figures.

Occlusion, symmetry, and object-based attention: comment on Behrmann, Zemel, and Mozer (1998).

The validity of M. Behrmann, R. Zemel, and M. Mozer's (1998) finding that object-based attention can be directed toward occluded objects is examined in 3 experiments. In M. Behrmann et al.'s (1998) original study, participants made speeded judgments of whether the numbers of bumps attached to 2 arms of an X shape were the same or different. The 2 sets of bumps belonged either to a single object, 2 different objects, or 2 separated parts of an occluded object. Unfortunately, this objecthood manipulation was confounded by the symmetry of the stimuli. Experiment 1 replicated M. Behrmann et al.'s main results using identical stimuli. Experiments 2a and 2b dissociated objecthood from symmetry. The results suggest that the effects of object-based attention found by M. Behrmann et al. are largely due to symmetry. The stimuli used in M. Behrmann et al. are not appropriate for examining the relation between object-based attention and occlusion.

Connectedness and part-relation integration in shape category learning.

We investigated the role of connectedness in the use of part-relation conjunctions for object category learning. Participants learned categories of two-part objects defined by the shape of one part and its location relative to the other (part-relation conjunctions). The topological relationship between the parts (connected, separated, or embedded) varied between participants but was invariant for any given participant. In Experiment 1, category learning was faster and more accurate when an object's parts were connected than when they were either separated or embedded. Subsequent experiments showed that this effect is not due to conscious strategies, differences in the salience of the individual attributes, or differences in the integrality/separability of dimensions across stimuli. The results suggest that connectedness affects the integration of parts with their relations in object category learning.

Connectedness and the integration of parts with relations in shape perception.

Seven experiments investigated whether part connectedness would facilitate the perception of spatial relations among object parts. Experiments 1-4 showed that objects composed of connected parts are easier to distinguish from distractors in rapid serial visual presentation sequences than objects composed of separated parts and that this effect cannot be attributed to the presence of local features in the connected images. Experiments 5 and 6 revealed that image-based connectedness is neither necessary nor sufficient for the connectedness effect, and Experiment 7 showed that the connectedness effect is not a simple feature conjunction effect (i.e., it does not hold in a shape-color conjunction search task). These findings are consistent with the claim, central to the structural description theories, that the visual system not only decomposes objects into parts but also explicitly integrates those parts with their spatial relations.

Attribute conjunctions and the part configuration advantage in object category learning.

Five experiments demonstrated that in object category learning people are particularly sensitive to conjunctions of part shapes and relative locations. Participants learned categories defined by a part's shape and color (part-color conjunctions) or by a part's shape and its location relative to another part (part-location conjunctions). The statistical properties of the categories were identical across these conditions, as were the salience of color and relative location. Participants were better at classifying objects defined by part-location conjunctions than objects defined by part-color conjunctions. Subsequent experiments revealed that this effect was not due to the specific color manipulation or the role of location per se. These results suggest that the shape bias in object categorization is at least partly due to sensitivity to part-location conjunctions and suggest a new processing constraint on category learning.

Mitoxantrone (dihydroxyanthracenedione) in acute leukemia. An evaluation of two treatment schedules by the Southwest Oncology Group.

Fifty-eight evaluable patients with acute leukemia were treated with Mitoxantrone (DHAD) according to two schedules: 14 mg/M2 as a single I.V. pulse dose administered three-week intervals, and 4 mg/M2/day for five days every three weeks. Six of 58 patients achieved a complete remission. One complete remission and 1 partial remission were observed among 26 patients treated with the single pulse schedule. Five (16%) complete remissions were attained among 32 patients treated on the daily x 5 schedule. Responses were observed only in patients with non-lymphoblastic leukemia. DHAD was very well tolerated with myelosuppression as the major toxicity. Nausea and vomiting were minimal. Subclinical cardiac toxicity occurred in two patients. This was identified by serial reductions in cardiac ejection fractions. DHAD appears to have significant activity in acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia with minimal toxicity.

Late intensification with POMP chemotherapy prolongs survival in acute myelogenous leukemia--results of a Southwest Oncology Group study of rubidazone versus adriamycin for remission induction, prophylactic intrathecal therapy, late intensification, and levamisole maintenance.

Between August 1978 and September 1982, 642 patients with newly diagnosed acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) were entered onto a Southwest Oncology Group Study which addressed four questions. (i) What is the comparative utility of rubidazone versus adriamycin in remission induction? (ii) What is the role of prophylactic intrathecal therapy in AML? (iii) Does late intensification affect treatment outcome? (iv) Does maintenance with levamisole affect disease-free survival or overall survival? Among 611 evaluable patients, 329 (54%) achieved complete remission. There was no difference in the remission rate between those patients receiving rubidazone (54%) and those receiving adriamycin (54%) as part of the induction regimen. Prophylactic intrathecal therapy with cytosine arabinoside had no effect on the incidence of central nervous system disease or survival. After nine months of complete remission, patients were randomized between late intensification with POMP (mercaptopurine + vincristine + methotrexate + prednisone) or continued maintenance with OAP (vincristine + cytosine arabinoside + prednisone). T patients randomized to late intensification had better survival and disease-free survival, compared to those randomized to receive no late intensification (p = 0.027 and 0.030, respectively). At twelve months of remission, surviving patients were randomized to receive levamisole or no further treatment. There was no evidence that levamisole affected survival or disease-free survival.

[The process of constructing mental models from spatial descriptions].

This study examined the effect of word order in constructing mental models from spatial descriptions. In Experiment 1, 24 graduate and undergraduate students read three sentences in length of spatial descriptions and verified location diagrams. Experimental factors were word order and propositional combinations. In single sentence processing, reading times (RTs) of Subject-Location-Verb (SLV) word order condition were longer than RTs of Location-Subject-Verb (LSV) condition. In the integration process, the effect of propositional combinations (reflected in RTs of the second sentence) were found only in the LSV condition. To clarify the integration process, the word order of the second sentence was changed in Experiment 2. Compared with the result of Experiment 1 (with both the first and the second sentence SLV). RTs of the second SLV sentence (with the first LSV) were reduced. These results support the hypothesis that the integration process is carried out by on-line processing, and that subjects use not only proportional representations of text, which contain logical relations of terms, but also surface structure information such as word order in constructing mental models.

Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor stimulates recovery of granulocytes in patients receiving dose-intensive chemotherapy without bone marrow transplantation.

Bone marrow colony-stimulating factors (CSF) ameliorate hematologic toxicity of standard chemotherapy regimens and may allow relatively safe use of intensive and more efficacious doses of anticancer drugs. Twenty-four patients with cancers for which no standard regimens were likely to be effective received repeated courses of a combination of cisplatin (150 mg/m2), etoposide (1,500 mg/m2), and cyclophosphamide (5,000 mg/m2) at doses for which bone marrow transplantation is usually used. A total of 10 patients received escalating doses of recombinant human granulocyte CSF (rhG-CSF); 11 patients receiving identical chemotherapy and supportive therapy without rhG-CSF served as controls for the first cycle of therapy. Five of these patients and 3 additional patients also served as their own controls, receiving rhG-CSF for all cycles after the first. No patient received bone marrow transplantation. rhG-CSF shortened the median duration of severe granulocytopenia (less than or equal to 100/mm3) in a dose-related fashion (P less than .03; Kruskal-Wallis test). Patients not receiving rhG-CSF had a median of 8.5 days of granulocytopenia. Those receiving 40 micrograms/kg of rhG-CSF for approximately 20 days from the third day after chemotherapy had a median of 7.0 days (P less than .23) and those receiving 60 micrograms/kg had a median of 5.5 days (P less than .007) of granulocytopenia. An rhG-CSF dose of 20 micrograms/kg had no effect. Recovery to a granulocyte count of at least 500/mm3 took a median of 12 days in the control group and 8 days (P less than .03) in patients receiving rhG-CSF at a dose of 60 mg/kg. The duration of antibiotic therapy (a median, 9.0 days v 5.0 days) was shortened with the two higher and effective doses of rhG-CSF compared with control patients. The duration of hospitalization (median of 20 days v 19 days) was not shortened. These findings that rhG-CSF decreases the risk of granulocytopenia associated with this particular dose-intensive chemotherapy regimen therapy administered without bone marrow transplantation.

Treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in adults with intensive induction, consolidation, and maintenance chemotherapy.

The Southwest Oncology Group conducted a study of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in adults over a 5-year period, testing the utility of the L-10M regimen initially described by the group from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. One hundred sixty-eight eligible patients were treated with this intensive combination chemotherapy regimen. One hundred fifteen (68%) achieved complete remission. With the current median follow-up time of 34.5 months, the median durations of remission, relapse-free survival, and overall survival were 22.9, 20.9, and 17.7 months, respectively. Only 35% of the patients over 50 years of age achieved a complete remission. Age was a significant prognostic factor for complete response, survival, relapse-free survival, and remission duration. In addition, a low initial WBC count was found to have a statistically significant association with longer remission duration. Responders between the ages of 20 and 49 years with WBC counts of less than 15,000 appear to have an exceptionally good prognosis.

Combination chemotherapy using adriamycin, DTIC, cyclophosphamide, and actinomycin D for advanced soft tissue sarcomas: a randomized comparative trial. A phase III, Southwest Oncology Group Study (7613).

The term soft tissue sarcoma refers to a large variety of malignant tumors arising in extraskeletal connective tissues that connect, support, and surround discrete anatomic structures. All visceral organs also contain a connective stroma that can undergo malignant transformation. Because of the histological similarities of this group of tumors and their relative rarity, treatment prescriptions for patients that have disseminated disease are most often uniform. In this study, we asked the question whether adding a third drug (cyclophosphamide or actinomycin D) to Adriamycin (Adr [Adria Laboratories, Columbus, OH])-(3,3-dimethyl-1-triazeno)- imidazole-4-carboxamide (DTIC) would improve the response rate and/or survival. A unique feature of this cooperative group clinical trial was the mandatory pathology review of the histological material. All patients of the Southwest Oncology Group between June 1, 1976, and November 17, 1979, who had a biopsy-confirmed diagnosis of a soft tissue sarcoma with convincing clinical or biopsy-documented evidence of metastatic disease were eligible for the study. Patients were randomized to receive (1) Adr, 60 mg/m2 intravenously, day 1, and DTIC, 250 mg/m2 every 3 weeks (104 patients); (2) Adr and DTIC as in (1) and cyclophosphamide, 500 mg/m2, day 1 (112 patients); or (3) Adr and DTIC as in (1) and actinomycin D, 1.2 mg/m2, day 1, (119 patients). There was no statistically significant difference in response rates (33%, 34%, and 24%) (P = .25). Median durations of response were 31 weeks in the Adr-DTIC arm, 26 weeks in the cyclophosphamide-DTIC-Adr arm, and 23 weeks in the Adr-DTIC-Actinomycin D arm (P = .78). Median durations of survival were 37, 42, and 50 weeks, respectively. Again, no statistically significant differences were observed (P = .59). Toxicities from each of these treatment arms were formidable and were equivalent. Prognostic factor analysis showed a prognosis based on bone marrow reserve, sex, and pathology subtype favorable to patients.

A useful high-dose intermittent schedule of adriamycin and DTIC in the treatment of advanced sarcomas.

One-hundred-fourteen evaluable patients with metastatic soft tissue or bony sarcoma with measurable disease were treated with Adriamycin (doxorubicin) administered intravenously at a dose of 60 mg/M2 on day 1, followed by DTIC (dacarbazine) at a dose of 750 mg/M2; courses were administered at 3-week intervals. Ten complete remissions and 17 partial remissions were observed. The most responsive cell type was malignant fibrous histiocytoma with a response rate of 54%. This treatment schedule was very well tolerated, with only moderate myelosuppression and moderate nausea and vomiting. Cardiac toxicity was identified in three patients, with two patients demonstrating electrocardiogram (EKG) changes and arrhythmias and only one patient developing heart failure. The 24% overall response rate suggests no compromise in activity on this schedule, with a significant reduction in toxicity.

Institutional performance in application of the FAB classification of acute leukemia. The Southwest Oncology Group experience.

Institutional performance in application of the French-American-British (FAB) classification of acute leukemia in The Southwest Oncology Group is presented, demonstrating a disparity between institutional and expert performance. A significant improvement is shown with an educational effort coupled with experience in use of the classification, and the importance of cytochemistry in the use of the classification is illustrated. A simplification of the classification, merging M1, M2, and M4 as M7, is proposed. This simplification improves institutional performance in use of the classification, while preserving distinctions that appear clinically important.

Reproducibility of the French-American-British classification of acute leukemia: the Southwest Oncology Group Experience.

After initial French-American-British (FAB) diagnosis by a multiinstitutional Southwest Oncology Group panel, slides of acute leukemia cases were recirculated to panel members for second review. The reproducibility of the FAB classification is analyzed. The classification is reproducible in the 70% range in panel reviewer hands and allows remarkable reproducibility in the morphologic and cytochemical distinction of acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL) from acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The limitations of a morphologic and cytochemical classification of acute leukemia are discussed. A simplification of the FAB system, merging M1, M2, and M4 as M7, is proposed; this simplification improves the system's reproducibility.

Chronic hemodialysis in end-stage lupus nephritis: changes of clinical and serological activities.

The available data on the clinical and serological activities of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in dialysis patients with end-stage lupus nephritis are limited. The clinical and serological parameters in 12 such patients prior to, at the onset of, and an average of 31 months after the institution of hemodialysis were retrospectively compared. One of the patients died of cardiopulmonary arrest within 1 week after institution of hemodialysis. All patients were clinically and serologically active prior to the onset of end-stage renal disease (ESRD). With the onset of ESRD, 2 of the 10 patients exhibited complete clinical and serological remission, and 2 patients showed clinical remission with persistent serological activity. After an average of 31 months on dialysis, the number of patients in total remission rose to 4 of 11, and the number of clinically inactive but serologically active patients was 1 of 11. Significant clinical and serological activities persisted in 6 of the 11 dialysis patients, requiring low dose steroid therapy in 3. The authors conclude that the clinical and serological activities of SLE decrease with the onset of ESRD and the institution of dialysis, leading to complete or partial remission in the majority of patients.

Defects in natural killer cell activity and interferon response in human lung carcinoma and malignant melanoma.

The natural killer (NK) activity of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 25 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the lung, malignant melanoma, or epitheloid cancers of the gastrointestinal tract was measured by the lysis of 51Cr-labeled K562 target cells. NK activities of many patients with lung cancer or malignant melanoma were decreased relative to normal controls. This abnormality was significantly correlated with advancing stage of disease and the percentage of monocytes in the cell suspensions. Addition of indomethacin or removal of monocytes did not restore depressed NK function to normal levels. Abnormalities of NK function did not appear to be secondary to the presence of mononuclear suppressor cells. The response to interferon was also impaired in patients with advanced disease. The number of effector:target conjugates was normal even in patients with depressed NK function; however, the number of active lytic effectors was decreased. These results imply that the cells which bind tumor targets are present in patients with advanced cancers, but these cells are either immature or functionally inactive.

Adriamycin versus adriamycin plus cis-diamminedichloroplatinum (DDP) in advanced transitional cell bladder carcinoma. A Southwest Oncology Group study.

Patients with advanced transitional cell bladder carcinoma were randomized to receive either adriamycin alone, or adriamycin plus DDP. Overall response (CR + PR) was 8/41 (19%) for adriamycin alone versus 16/37 (43%) for the combination (p = 0.02). Median response duration was 14 weeks for adriamycin versus 25 weeks for the combination (p = 0.17). Median survival was 28 weeks on adriamycin versus 31 weeks on the combination (p = 0.82). Median survival of responders was 43 weeks, and for patients with stable disease it was 29 weeks. This was significantly better than for those with increasing disease at 15 weeks (p = 0.02). Increased frequency of leukopenia and gastrointestinal toxicity were seen with the combination. Cardiotoxicity and nephrotoxicity were not prohibitive.

Adriamycin combined with 10-day Ara-C, vincristine, and prednisone (10-day ADOAP) in the treatment of adult acute leukemia patients under fifty years of age. A Southwest Oncology Group Study.

In a twelve-month period, 56 consecutive patients with acute leukemia, aged 15-50, were treated by administration of a 10-day continuous infusion of Ara-C in combination with adriamycin, oncovin and prednisone (10 day ADOAP). Of 50 evaluable patients, there were 39 complete remissions (78%) with a median remission duration of 71 weeks. After adjustment for age and other known prognostic factors, the complete remission rate is still 10% higher than that found using a similar regimen without adriamycin.