Executive function impairment in first-degree relatives of persons with schizophrenia: A meta-analysis of controlled studies

A meta-analysis of past research evaluated the relationship between deficits in executive functioning among unaffected first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. The Wisconsin Cart Sorting Test (WCST), a reliable measurement of cognition and abstract thinking, was examined as the dependent variable. Unaffected first-degree relatives perform worse than controls on two important dimensions of the WCST. They achieve significantly less categories and significantly more perseverative errors.