Antisocial Behaviour and Executive Functions in Young Offenders

Antisocial behavior is related to the injury of the prefrontal cortex and a growing body of research points to the executive dysfunction as a risk factor for the onset, maintenance and abandonment of delinquency. Due to the complexity of the study of executive functions and the diversity of methodologies used for the study of this relationship, the empirical evidence is divergent. The aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship between delinquency and executive dysfunction in juvenile samples. For this purpose, a meta-analysis is performed with 33 published articles until 2014. The results of the meta-analysis support the existence of an executive alteration in young offenders. The magnitude of this alteration could be influenced by the age and the type of test used to evaluate executive functions. (C) 2017 Universidad de Pais Vasco. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. All rights reserved.