A new procedure called single-word shadowing was applied to the study of lexical access in context. Subjects listened to word pairs or sentences recorded in one voice and were asked to repeat the target word signaled by a voice shift. This technique yielded rapid and robust priming effects in normal adult subjects in word pairs and in a sentence context. Regression analyses showed that the semantic priming effects were large and significant, even when several additional factors believed to affect lexical access were controlled. Evidence was found for robust semantic priming in the healthy elderly and in children from 7 to 11 years of age, and there was also evidence for a change in the size and nature of context effects across the lifespan. Because single-word shadowing works across a broad age range and does not require reading, secondary tasks, or metalinguistic judgments, it is a promising tool for the study of lexical access in a range of different populations.

Between April 1982 and March 1983,10 of 26 (38.4%) allogeneic bone marrow transplant recipients housed on a newly opened bone marrow transplant unit developed invasive aspergillosis. By contrast, between September 1977 and March 1982, only 3 of 46 (6%) transplant recipients developed invasive aspergillosis. A case-control study to identify host factors related to Aspergillus infection found that aspergillosis was more common in patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia and aplastic anemia, older patients, patients having cytomegalovirus disease, patients who experienced prolonged granulocytopenia, patients conditioned with ara-C (100-200 mg/day), and patients who received longer duration of antimicrobial therapy. A series of logistic regression analyses revealed that underlying disease was the single best predictor of Aspergillus infection. This study demonstrates that underlying disease is an important risk factor for aspergillosis and that special measures may be warranted when transplanting certain patients.