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Towards a PRISMA statement for bilingual neuroimaging meta-analyses: Preliminary considerations and survey design
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Lindy Comstock1; 1UCLA
Meta-analyses are an essential tool relied upon by scholars to aggregate research findings for the purpose of assessing the statistical power and generalizability of neuroimaging results. Meta-analyses have the potential to substantiate working hypotheses or reveal differences between categories of data that may escape detection in individual studies (Borenstein et al., 2021). However, the reliability of meta-analyses depends on rigorous adherence to a set of principles that define the nature of data to be included: when errors in this process occur and disparate data are combined, the intended goals of a meta-analysis cannot be realized (Thompson, 1994). Thus, a clear standard is necessary to enforce common data labeling and reporting practices if authors wish to make their research available to the larger research community for additional analysis. Bilingual neuroimaging meta-analyses prove particularly complex in that subjects are often highly heterogeneous in terms of their socioeconomic background, language experience, and proficiency level for various linguistic competencies (Comstock, 2024). Secondly, a wide range of methodological parameters and study design protocols may be implemented with considerable effect on the study outcome (Binder et al., 2008). Essential details may be absent from published papers or difficult to locate within the text due to author- or study-specific conventions in how terms may be referred to or which details were considered relevant by the study team. The absence of a common method to define and measure descriptive categories (e.g., proficiency level, degree of language exposure, age of acquisition, etc.) constitutes a substantive limitation in the literature that can preclude the collection of data similar enough in a large enough quantity to allow for meaningful meta-analyses (Fedorenko & Kanwisher, 2009). To address this general issue, the PRISMA framework (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) has been widely accepted as a common standard for best practice in conducting meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews (Page et al., 2021). PRISMA allows for a more specific set of statement papers to be created that address the needs of specific fields. The process of compiling a statement paper generally includes a series of actions that collect opinions from the larger academic community within a field or subfield, beginning with a general survey, a round table to discuss the survey findings, and a final panel of experts to determine which new considerations should be included in the statement paper. This Sandbox Series abstract introduces a preliminary survey for the neurolinguistics community to discuss and critique. The survey includes not only the proposed questions to disseminate to the wider research community, but also a proposed standard for labeling and presenting key data in a table form (similar to the STAR methods format, etc.) to ensure that errors in reporting do not occur due to opaque labeling or reporting practices.
Topic Areas: Methods,