Executive Functions in Primary Progressive Aphasia: a Meta-Analysis

This dataset hold the research data used for the meta-analysis on executive functions in primary progressive aphasia. It includes: (1) data extraction table, with all data extracted from all included articles, (2) PRISMA checklist, (3) references of all included articles, (4) R markdown document including script and results.

Executive functions (EFs) refer to a set of cognitive processes, specifically shifting, inhibition, updating of working memory, and are involved in the cognitive control of behavior.
Conflicting results have been reported regarding impairments of EFs in PrimaryProgressive Aphasia (PPA). We performed a multi-level meta-analysis to confirm whether defic its of EFs exist in this population, focusing on a common EFs composite, and the components shifting, inhibition and updating separately. We included 141 studies that report on 294 EFs tasks. The overall mean weighted effect size was large (d ¼  1,28), indicating poorer EFs in PPA as compared to age-matched cognitively healthy controls. Differences between effect
sizes of the EFs components were not significant, indicating all components are affected similarly. Overall, moderator analysis revealed that PPA variant and disease duration were significant moderators of performance, while task modality and years of education were not. The non-fluent/agrammatic PPA and the logopenic PPA variants were similarly affected, but the semantic variant was affected to a lesser extent. We discuss implications
for clinical and research settings, and future research.