Do children use different forms of verbal rehearsal in serial picture recall tasks? A multi-method study

Use of verbal rehearsal is a key issue in memory development. However, we still lack detailed and triangulated information about the early development and the circumstances in which different forms of rehearsal are used. To further understand significant factors that affect children’s use of various forms of rehearsal, the present study involving 108 primary school children adopted a multi-method approach. It combined a carefully chosen word length effect method with a self-paced presentation time method to obtain behavioural indicators of verbal rehearsal. In addition, subsequent trial-by-trial self-reports were gathered. Word length effects in recall suggested that phonological recoding (converting images to names - a necessary precursor for rehearsal) took place, with evidence of more rehearsal among children with higher performance levels. According to self-paced presentation times, cumulative rehearsal was the dominant form of rehearsal only for children with higher spans on difficult trials. The combined results of self-paced times and word length effects in recall suggest that ‘naming’ as simple form of rehearsal was dominant for most children. Self-reports were in line with these conclusions. Additionally, children used a mixture of strategies with considerable intra-individual variability, yet strategy use was nevertheless linked to age as well as performance levels

Assessment of adipokines, adenine nucleotides and uric acid in the dynamics of coronary intervention

Introduction: The association of vaspin and visfatin, with a myocardial infarction is still not fully understood. Reduced levels of adenine nucleotides are hallmarks of chronic heart failure. There is little data concerning the relationship between these markers and their changes over time. Material/Methods: The concentration of adenine nucleotides, vaspin and visfatinwere assessed in 41 consecutive patients with acute myocardial infarction one before (day I) and four days after (day IV) percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and a control group. Results: Visfatin concentrations were higher before and after PCI vs. control (visfatin I: median 25.55, 20.12 - 30.69 ng/ml; visfatin IV: median 20.79, 16.89 - 25.61 ng/ml vs. control: median 14.94, 10.66 - 25.25 ng/ml; p < 0.0001). Vaspin concentrations were lower before and after PCI vs. control (vaspin I: median 0.18, 0.11 - 0.44 ng/ml; vaspin IV: median 0.24, 0.15 - 0.58 ng/ml vs. control: median 1.303, 1.13 - 2.26 ng/ml, p < 0.00001). Concentrations of visfatin, day I, correlated well to vaspin concentrations (r2 = 0.201, p = 0.011). ATP levels were significantly lower in patients vs. controls (day I: p = 0.00012; day IV: p = 0.0001). Conclusions: Changes in the analyzed visfatin and vaspin concentrations can be used as potential MI markers. Visfatin serum concentration may be considered a potential marker to differentiate MI over time

Increasing emergency number utilisation is not driven by low-acuity calls: an observational study of 1.5 million emergency calls (2018 – 2021) from Berlin

Background: The Emergency Medical Service (EMS) in Germany is increasingly challenged by strongly rising demand. Speculations about a greater utilisation for minor cases have led to intensive media coverage, but empirical evidence is lacking. We investigated the development of low-acuity calls from 2018 to 2021 in the federal state of Berlin and its correlations with sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: We analysed over 1.5 million call documentations including medical dispatch codes, age, location and time using descriptive and inferential statistics and multivariate binary logistic regression. We defined a code list to classify low-acuity calls and merged the dataset with sociodemographic indicators and data on population density. Results: The number of emergency calls (phone number 112 in Germany) increased by 9.1% from 2018 to 2021; however, the proportion of low-acuity calls did not increase. The regression model shows higher odds of low-acuity for young to medium age groups (especially for age 0–9, OR 1.50 [95% CI 1.45–1.55]; age 10–19, OR 1.77 [95% CI 1.71–1.83]; age 20–29, OR 1.64 [95% CI 1.59–1.68] and age 30–39, OR 1.40 [95% CI 1.37–1.44]; p < 0.001, reference group 80–89) and for females (OR 1.12 [95% CI 1.1–1.13], p < 0.001). Odds were slightly higher for calls from a neighbourhood with lower social status (OR 1.01 per index unit increase [95% CI 1.0–1.01], p < 0.05) and at the weekend (OR 1.02 [95% CI 1.0–1.04, p < 0.05]). No significant association of the call volume with population density was detected. Conclusions: This analysis provides valuable new insights into pre-hospital emergency care. Low-acuity calls were not the primary driver of increased EMS utilisation in Berlin. Younger age is the strongest predictor for low-acuity calls in the model. The association with female gender is significant, while socially deprived neighbourhoods play a minor role. No statistically significant differences in call volume between densely and less densely populated regions were detected. The results can inform the EMS in future resource planning

Strategic verbal rehearsal in adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities: A multi-centre European study

Background: There is a long-held view that verbal short-term memory problems of individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) might be due to a deficit in verbal rehearsal. However, the evidence is inconclusive and word length effects as indicator of rehearsal have been criticised. Aim & Method: The aim of this multi-site European study was to investigate verbal rehearsal in adolescents with mild ID (n=90) and a comparison group of typically developing children matched individually for mental age (MA, n=90). The investigation involved: (1) a word length experiment with non-verbal recall using pointing and (2) ‘self-paced’ inspection times to infer whether verbal strategies were utilised when memorising a set of pictorial items. Results: The word length effect on recall did not interact with group, suggesting that adolescents with ID and MA comparisons used similar verbal strategies, possibly phonological recoding of picture names. The inspection time data suggested that high span individuals in both groups used verbal labelling or single item rehearsal on more demanding lists, as long named items had longer inspection times. Conclusions: The findings suggest that verbal strategy use is not specifically impaired in adolescents with mild ID and is mental age appropriate, supporting a developmental perspective

On Conceptually Simple Algorithms for Variants of Online Bipartite Matching

We present a series of results regarding conceptually simple algorithms for bipartite matching in various online and related models. We first consider a deterministic adversarial model. The best approximation ratio possible for a one-pass deterministic online algorithm is $1/2$, which is achieved by any greedy algorithm. D\"urr et al. recently presented a $2$-pass algorithm called Category-Advice that achieves approximation ratio $3/5$. We extend their algorithm to multiple passes. We prove the exact approximation ratio for the $k$-pass Category-Advice algorithm for all $k \ge 1$, and show that the approximation ratio converges to the inverse of the golden ratio $2/(1+\sqrt{5}) \approx 0.618$ as $k$ goes to infinity. The convergence is extremely fast --- the $5$-pass Category-Advice algorithm is already within $0.01\%$ of the inverse of the golden ratio. We then consider a natural greedy algorithm in the online stochastic IID model---MinDegree. This algorithm is an online version of a well-known and extensively studied offline algorithm MinGreedy. We show that MinDegree cannot achieve an approximation ratio better than $1-1/e$, which is guaranteed by any consistent greedy algorithm in the known IID model. Finally, following the work in Besser and Poloczek, we depart from an adversarial or stochastic ordering and investigate a natural randomized algorithm (MinRanking) in the priority model. Although the priority model allows the algorithm to choose the input ordering in a general but well defined way, this natural algorithm cannot obtain the approximation of the Ranking algorithm in the ROM model

The Effects of Duodenojejunal Omega Switch in Combination with High-Fat Diet and Control Diet on Incretins, Body Weight, and Glucose Tolerance in Sprague-Dawley Rats

Background: Despite excellent results of bariatric surgery in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and weight loss in human subjects, some patients do not obtain desired results. One of the reasons for this is that not all patients follow caloric intake recommendations. Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of duodenojejunal omega switch (DJOS) surgery on body weight, glucose tolerance, and incretins in rats. Methods: DJOS and SHAM surgery were performed on rats maintained for 8 weeks on high-fat diet (HF) and control diet (CD), respectively. After surgery, four groups were kept on the same diet as before the surgery, and four groups had a changed diet (CD vs. HF and HF vs. CD) for the next 8 weeks. Glucose tolerance, insulin tolerance, glucose-stimulated insulin, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and gastric inhibitory polypeptide/glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) secretion, food intake, and body weight were measured. Results: A change of diet after surgery resulted in reduced glucose tolerance. Plasma insulin levels were lowered between DJOS and SHAM surgeries for the HF/HF and CD/HF groups. DJOS surgery did not reduce body weight in the studied groups, irrespective of diet. In the HF/HF group, ΔGLP-1 was lower for DJOS surgery in comparison with other groups. Differences of weight changes were observed for groups HF/HF and HF/CD. After DJOS surgery, ΔGIP was lower in the CD/HF group compared with HF/HF. Conclusions: Our results show that applications of different types of diets, before and after surgery, is a sensitive method for studies of mechanism of glucose intolerance after DJOS surgery

Multilab Direct Replication of Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky (1966): Spontaneous Verbal Rehearsal in a Memory Task as a Function of Age

Work by Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky indicated a change in the spontaneous production of overt verbalization behaviors when comparing young children (age 5) with older children (age 10). Despite the critical role that this evidence of a change in verbalization behaviors plays in modern theories of cognitive development and working memory, there has been only one other published near replication of this work. In this Registered Replication Report, we relied on researchers from 17 labs who contributed their results to a larger and more comprehensive sample of children. We assessed memory performance and the presence or absence of verbalization behaviors of young children at different ages and determined that the original pattern of findings was largely upheld: Older children were more likely to verbalize, and their memory spans improved. We confirmed that 5- and 6-year-old children who verbalized recalled more than children who did not verbalize. However, unlike Flavell et al., substantial proportions of our 5- and 6-year-old samples overtly verbalized at least sometimes during the picture memory task. In addition, continuous increase in overt verbalization from 7 to 10 years old was not consistently evident in our samples. These robust findings should be weighed when considering theories of cognitive development, particularly theories concerning when verbal rehearsal emerges and relations between speech and memory

Lexical access speed and the development of phonological recoding during immediate serial recall

A recent Registered Replication Report (RRR) of the development of verbal rehearsal during serial recall revealed that children verbalized at younger ages than previously thought, but did not identify sources of individual differences. Here, we use mediation analysis to reanalyze data from the 934 children ranging from 5 to 10 years old from the RRR for that purpose. From ages 5 to 7, the time taken for a child to label pictures (i.e. isolated naming speed) predicted the child’s spontaneous use of labels during a visually presented serial reconstruction task, despite no need for spoken responses. For 6- and 7-year-olds, isolated naming speed also predicted recall. The degree to which verbalization mediated the relation between isolated naming speed and recall changed across development. All relations dissipated by age 10. The same general pattern was observed in an exploratory analysis of delayed recall for which greater demands are placed on rehearsal for item maintenance. Overall, our findings suggest that spontaneous phonological recoding during a standard short-term memory task emerges around age 5, increases in efficiency during the early elementary school years, and is sufficiently automatic by age 10 to support immediate serial recall in most children. Moreover, the findings highlight the need to distinguish between phonological recoding and rehearsal in developmental studies of short-term memory