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ObjectiveTo investigate cognitive inhibition in presymptomatic C9orf72 mutation carriers (C9+) and its associated neuroanatomical correlates.MethodsThirty-eight presymptomatic C9orf72 mutation carriers (C9+, mean age 38.2±8.0 years) and 22 C9− controls from the PREV-DEMALS cohort were included in this study. They underwent a cognitive inhibition assessment with the Hayling Sentence Completion Test (HSCT; time to completion (part B−part A); error score in part B) as well as a 3D MRI.ResultsC9+ individuals younger than 40 years had higher error scores (part B) but equivalent HSCT time to completion (part B−part A) compared to C9− individuals. C9+ individuals older than 40 years had both higher error scores and longer time to completion. HSCT time to completion significantly predicted the proximity to estimated clinical conversion from presymptomatic to symptomatic phase in C9+ individuals (based on the average age at onset of affected relatives in the family). Anatomically, we found that HSCT time to completion was associated with the integrity of the cerebellum.ConclusionThe HSCT represents a good marker of cognitive inhibition impairments in C9+ and of proximity to clinical conversion. This study also highlights the key role of the cerebellum in cognitive inhibition.

To avoid post-neurosurgical language deficits, intraoperative mapping of the language function in the brain can be complemented with preoperative mapping with fMRI. The validity of an fMRI ‘language localizer’ paradigm crucially depends on the choice of an optimal language task and baseline condition. This study presents a new fMRI ‘language localizer’ in Russian using overt sentence completion, a task that comprehensively engages the language function by involving both production and comprehension at the word and sentence level. The paradigm was validated in 18 neurologically healthy volunteers who participated in two scanning sessions, for estimating test-retest reliability. For the first time, two baseline conditions for the sentence completion task were compared. At the group level, the paradigm significantly activated both anterior and posterior language-related regions. Individual-level analysis showed that activation was elicited most consistently in the inferior frontal regions, followed by posterior temporal regions and the angular gyrus. Test-retest reliability of activation location, as measured by Dice coefficients, was moderate and thus comparable to previous studies. Test-retest reliability was higher in the frontal than temporo-parietal region and with the most liberal statistical thresholding compared to two more conservative thresholding methods. Lateralization indices were expectedly left-hemispheric, with greater lateralization in the frontal than temporo-parietal region, and showed moderate test-retest reliability. Finally, the pseudoword baseline elicited more extensive and more reliable activation, although the syllable baseline appears more feasible for future clinical use. Overall, the study demonstrated the validity and reliability of the sentence completion task for mapping the language function in the brain. The paradigm needs further validation in a clinical sample of neurosurgical patients. Additionally, the study contributes to general evidence on test-retest reliability of fMRI.

Verbal fluency is a measure of cognitive flexibility and word search strategies that is widely used to characterize impaired cognitive function. Despite the wealth of research on identifying and characterizing distinct aspects of verbal fluency, the anatomic and functional substrates of retrieval-related search and post-retrieval control processes still have not been fully elucidated. Twenty-one native English-speaking, healthy, right-handed, adult volunteers (mean age = 31 years; range = 21-45 years; 9 F) took part in a block-design functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study of free recall, covert word generation tasks when guided by phonemic (P), semantic-category (C), and context-based fill-in-the-blank sentence completion (S) cues. General linear model (GLM), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), and psychophysiological interaction (PPI) were used to further characterize the neural substrate of verbal fluency as a function of retrieval cue type. Common localized activations across P, C, and S tasks occurred in the bilateral superior and left inferior frontal gyrus, left anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA), and left insula. Differential task activations were centered in the occipital, temporal and parietal regions as well as the thalamus and cerebellum. The context-based fluency task, i.e., the S task, elicited higher differential brain activity in a lateralized frontal-temporal network typically engaged in complex language processing. P and C tasks elicited activation in limited pathways mainly within the left frontal regions. ICA and PPI results of the S task suggested that brain regions distributed across both hemispheres, extending beyond classical language areas, are recruited for lexical-semantic access and retrieval during sentence completion. Study results support the hypothesis of overlapping, as well as distinct, neural networks for covert word generation when guided by different linguistic cues. The increased demand on word retrieval is met by the concurrent recruitment of classical as well as non-classical language-related brain regions forming a large cognitive neural network. The retrieval-related search and post-retrieval control processes that subserve verbal fluency, therefore, reverberates across distinct functional networks as determined by respective task demands.

Children’s happiness is an important issue that needs to be addressed around the world; however, limited research has explored how children define happiness. In this study, we conducted a survey of elementary school children living in different countries and clarified the contextual definitions of happiness by a total of 842 children (Mean age = 11.01, SD  = 1.05, effective rate = 97.34%) from Grades 4 to 6 living in Japan ( n  = 474), Mongolia ( n  = 121), and Finland ( n  = 247). We investigated the definition of children’s happiness using the stimulus sentence completion test. For Mongolian children, happiness was predominantly characterized by references to family relationships. For Finnish children, happiness appeared to be linked to autonomous involvement with things, personal achievement, and success. Furthermore, the happiness of Japanese children was largely characterized by pleasant versus unpleasant experiences. In addition, Japanese children often referred to “being scolded” and their happiness was not related to school success. Our findings concurred with the elements of Seligman’s ( 2012 ) concept of flourishing as a new criterion for judging well-being. It was also suggested that the dominant elements of happiness may differ depending on an individual’s country and culture.

The increasing use of internet, especially the proliferation of social networks has offered companies of all sectors the opportunity to keep in contact with their consumers; getting their feedbacks and complains on a daily basis and even to create short online chains enabling consumers to buy their products. This trend is found to be rather limited in the case of food products. The main objective of this article is to deal with consumer’s perceptions towards the potential use of social media to create online short supply chains for food. Projective techniques (Sentence completion tasks) have been used in this study. As, they allow researchers to uncover motivations, emotions and beliefs that drive consumer’s perception and behavior which may not be detected by straightforward questioning. The findings of this study have allowed to obtain insight into those aspects that consumers regard as opportunities or barriers of such potential short food chains. The main aspect is to put food enterprises in the picture about what is going on in consumer’s mind. This might open new possibilities for food businesses to develop a new short food chain.

This study explored noun and verb retrieval using a sentence completion task to expand upon previous findings from picture naming tasks. Participants completed sentences missing either a target noun or verb in the final position. Non-target responses were coded for substitution type, imageability and frequency. Like picture naming, nouns and verbs differed in non-target substitution type—within-category substitutions were primarily nouns and out-of-category substitutions were primarily verbs. Imageability predicted multiple substitution types for both word classes, whereas frequency predicted noun substitution types but not verbs. Findings support theories of noun and verb differences in semantic retrieval, showing the robustness of this effect across methodologies, and shed new light on the influence of imageability and frequency during semantic retrieval.

The growth of adult ego development to post-conventional levels is associated with many adaptive advantages for the individual and society. However, the vast majority of adults across a wide range of samples demonstrate ego stages well below the maximum potential. In an effort to advance understanding of why and how development to higher ego levels might occur for some individuals and not others, we explored whether particular personality preferences and combinations thereof (as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI) are associated with higher ego levels and whether particular personality preferences might act as inhibiting or facilitating factors in ego development. Participants were 374 adults (aged 18–61; 50 % female) undertaking 11 community leadership development and 2 professional management development programs. After adjusting for effects of age and education, a preference for Intuition on the MBTI was associated with significantly higher ego development on program entry and with greater ego development during the programs. These results are consistent with previous research and provide support for Manners’ and Durkin’s (Developmental Review, 20:475–513, 2000 ) proposal that dispositional personality characteristics may enhance or constrain ego development.

It has been suggested that difficulties with tense and agreement marking are a core feature of language impairment. Hence, studies are required that analyse the effectiveness of intervention in this area, including consideration of whether changes seen in therapy sessions generalize to spontaneous speech. This study assessed the effectiveness of therapy based around Shape Coding in developing the use of the regular past tense morpheme -ed in two school-aged children with language impairments. It also considered whether participants benefited from additional generalization therapy in order to start using target forms in their spontaneous speech. The former was assessed using a sentence completion task and the latter by a conversational task with blind assessors. One participant improved markedly in sentence completion but did not gain in the conversation task until after the generalization therapy. The other made more modest gains on the sentence completion task and seemed to generalize to the conversation task without recourse to the generalization therapy. Larger studies are required to confirm these interpretations and to determine whether they are applicable to the wider population of children with language impairments.

This paper reports on leadership program participants’ experience of, and readiness for, stage transition (when one adult developmental stage gives way to another—as in Loevinger’s (Ego development. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1976 ) stage theory of consciousness, or ego, development). This appears to be the first study reporting the subjective experience of recent shifts in consciousness specifically within the context of leadership development programs. Using qualitative thematic methods to analyse survey responses from 84 individuals graduating from three Australian community leadership programs, we compared the accounts of those who had shifted a stage of consciousness (‘shifters’), those who had changed but not transitioned (‘movers’), and those who had not experienced change (‘non-shifters’). We found support for theoretical predictions concerning the types of changes shifters noticed in themselves, consistent with the small but growing body of research showing positive associations between consciousness development and better leadership performance and organisational outcomes. The data additionally provide support for the conceptual framework of consciousness development articulated by Manners and Durkin (Dev Rev 20:475–513, 2000 . doi: 10.1006/drev.2000.0508 ), and contextual information which may help explain and predict the differing responses to leadership training of people with Myers Briggs Type Indicator Sensing and Intuition preferences—thus contributing to program selection and design. An important, if preliminary, finding was that when selecting candidates for developmental training programs, people who are experiencing significant work or other life changes and challenges should arguably be prioritised rather than sidelined: our shifters cited such challenges as influences promoting readiness for change. Although these conclusions are based on an analysis of survey data, they provide direction for future in-depth qualitative and quantitative research.

Language is classically thought to be supported by perisylvian cortical regions. Here we provide intracranial evidence linking the hippocampal complex to linguistic processing. We used direct recordings from the hippocampal structures to investigate whether theta oscillations, pivotal in memory function, track the amount of contextual linguistic information provided in sentences. Twelve participants heard sentences that were either constrained (“She locked the door with the”) or unconstrained (“She walked in here with the”) before presentation of the final word (“key”), shown as a picture that participants had to name. Hippocampal theta power increased for constrained relative to unconstrained contexts during sentence processing, preceding picture presentation. Our study implicates hippocampal theta oscillations in a language task using natural language associations that do not require memorization. These findings reveal that the hippocampal complex contributes to language in an active fashion, relating incoming words to stored semantic knowledge, a necessary process in the generation of sentence meaning.