The association between psychological traumatization and executive functions in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic approach

Executive functions are of growing interest in the field of psychotrauma. As both traumatization and deficits in executive functioning can have negative effects on children’s development, it is important to identify their... [ view full abstract ]

Executive functions are of growing interest in the field of psychotrauma. As both traumatization and deficits in executive functioning can have negative effects on children’s development, it is important to identify their association. Besides the development of post-traumatic stress disorder, experiencing trauma may be related to lower levels of executive functioning in children and adolescents, across domains of cognitive flexibility, inhibition and working memory. However, the strength of these associations may be dependent on timing and type of trauma, publication status, study design, and type of measurement instruments. Specifically, we expected that early traumatization has more negative consequences on executive functions than traumatization in adolescence. Furthermore, we expected that exposure to chronic trauma has a stronger negative association with executive functions than exposure to a single traumatic event. To study the main association between traumatization and executive function and to study the moderator hypotheses described above, we conducted a meta-analysis on studies published between 1990 and 2016 that we retrieved from MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsychINFO. Participants in selected studies were aged 4 to 25. In a multilevel analysis, we estimated the main effect size for the relationship between traumatization and executive functions. Next, we examined significant differences in variances of effect sizes between studies. Preliminary results indicated that there was an association between trauma and executive functioning among children and adolescents. In addition, preliminary results showed there was significant variance in effect sizes between studies – suggesting the importance of testing moderator effects of type of trauma and timing of trauma. Forthcoming analyses, still underway, will show whether which of the putative moderators explains the variance in effect sizes between studies, and will establish the exact strength of the association between trauma and executive functioning in children and adolescents.
Keywords: psychotrauma, meta-analysis, executive functions, posttraumatic stress disorder