A Computerized Version of the Scrambled Sentences Test

Roberto Viviani, Lisa Dommes, Julia E. Bosch, Julia C. Stingl, Petra Beschoner

The scrambled sentences test (SST), an experimental procedure that involves participants writing down their cognitions, has been used to elicit individual differences in depressiveness and vulnerability to depression. We describe here a modification of the SST to adapt it to computerized administration, with a particular view of its use in large samples and functional neuroimaging applications. In a first study with the computerized version, we reproduce the preponderance of positive cognitions in the healthy and the inverse association of these cognitions with individual measures of depressiveness. We also report a tendency of self-referential cognitions to elicit higher positive cognition rates. In a second study, we describe the patterns of neural activations elicited by emotional and neutral sentences in a functional neuroimaging study, showing that it replicates and extends previous findings obtained with the original version of the SST. During the formation of emotional cognitions, ventral areas such as the ventral anterior cingulus and the supramarginal gyrus were relatively activated. This activation pattern speaks for the recruitment of mechanisms coordinating motivational and associative processes in the formation of value-based decisions.