Neuropsychological and behavioral assessment of impulsivity in adolescents: a systematic review.

Introduction:: The aim of neuropsychological assessment is to understand the multifaceted relationship between behavior, cognition and brain organization. The main objective of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature on impulsivity and inhibitory control in healthy adolescents and preadolescents.

Method:: Three researchers conducted a systematic review on November 25, 2014. The first step was to conduct searches on the Web of Knowledge and PubMed databases for articles in English using the following keywords: child; adolescents; impulsivity; inhibition; inhibitory control; and neuropsychology. The second step was to analyze all the references cited in the articles selected from the search results in order to identify further literature.

Results:: Just 13 articles met all the inclusion criteria. There was no consistency in the aims of these studies, or in the instruments or procedures employed.

Conclusion:: There was no uniformity among the articles that met all the criteria in terms of any of the items analyzed. There was considerable heterogeneity in these studies of impulsivity and inhibitory control, and few of them evaluated healthy samples.