Brain and Language Lab

Meta-analyses and Comprehensive Reviews

In order to capture reliable patterns of findings we are turning more and more to meta-analyses, quantitative syntheses, and comprehensive or systematic reviews. These cover a variety of topics (e.g., language, memory, and disorders) and both behavioral and neuroanatomical findings. For example, we have published meta-analyses of procedural memory deficits as examined in the serial reaction time (SRT) task in dyslexia (Lum et al., 2013), Developmental Language Disorder/Specific Language Impairment (Lum et al., 2014), and Parkinson's disease (Clark et al., 2014) and meta-analyses of studies testing correlations between learning in declarative or procedural memory and first or second language abilities (Hamrick et al., 2018). Our neuroanatomical meta-analyses have thus far examined language learning (Tagarelli et al., 2019) and sequence learning in procedural memory (Janacsek et al., 2020). Finally a new comprehensive review reveals that subcortical structures throughout the brain underlie multiple aspects of both lower and higher cognition (Janacsek et al., 2022).

Publications

Morgan-Short, K., Hamrick, P., & Ullman, M. T. (2022). Declarative and Procedural Memory as Predictors of Second Language Development. In S. Li, P. Hiver, M. Papi (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Individual Differences (pp. 67-81). (Supporting Table 1). For link to Supporting Table in Open Science Framework click HERE

Janacsek, K., Evans, T. M., Kiss, M., Shah, L., Blumenfeld H., & Ullman, M. T. (2022). Subcortical cognition: the fruit below the rind. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 45, 361–86. (Supplemental Materials).

Janacsek, K., Shattuck, K. F., Tagarelli, K. M., Lum, J. A. G., Turkeltaub, P. E., & Ullman, M. T. (2020) Sequence learning in the human brain: A functional neuroanatomical meta-analysis of serial reaction time studies. NeuroImage, 207, 116387. 

Tagarelli, K. M., Shattuck, K. F., Turkeltaub, P. E., & Ullman, M. T. (2019). Language learning in the adult brain: A neuroanatomical meta-analysis of lexical and grammatical learning. NeuroImage, 193, 178-200. (Supplementary Tables).

Hamrick, P., Lum, J. A., & Ullman, M. T. (2018). Child first language and adult second language are both tied to general-purpose learning systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(7), 1487-1492. (Supporting Information).

Clark, G. M., Lum, J. A. G., & Ullman, M. T. (2014). A meta-analysis and meta-regression of serial reaction time task performance in Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychology, 28(6), 945-958.

Lum, J. A. G., Conti-Ramsden, G. M., Morgan, A. T., & Ullman, M. T. (2014). Procedural learning deficits in Specific Language Impairment (SLI): A meta-analysis of serial reaction time task performance. Cortex,51, 1-10.

Lum, J. A. G., Ullman, M. T., & Conti-Ramsden, G. (2013). Procedural learning is impaired in dyslexia: Evidence from a meta-analysis of serial reaction time studies. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(10), 3460-3476.