Living with Violence and Its Relationship with Executive Function in Childhood and Adolescence: Literature Review

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to conduct a literature review of studies that have investigated the relationship between violence and the development of executive function (EF) in children and adolescents. A search was carried out in the PsycINFO, PubMed/Medline, BVS, Lilacs, Web of Science, Scopus, and Gale databases with the following descriptors; violence, executive functions, child, children, adolescence, an adolescent. A total of 486 articles, published in the last 10 years, were found. After reading the abstracts and considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria, eight articles remain that are related to the topic. It was found that all the studies investigated the relationship of abuse in children and adolescents. Diversity was also observed in terms of the EF components evaluated as well as in the instruments for assessing EF. Moreover, seven of the eight studies established that victimization impairs EF.