The effect of pubertal status on self-regulation of behavior – a systematic review

Abstract

Behavioral self-regulation (BSR) refers to a set of abilities such as cool and hot executive functions, that enable flexible, adaptive, and goal-directed regulation of behavior. During adolescence, BSR improves as individuals age and learn from their experiences. Crucially, BSR is also influenced by maturational changes related to pubertal development. However, the contribution of pubertal status to BSR development beyond age-related effects is unclear. Here, we performed a systematic review of the literature to investigate effects of pubertal status that can be separated from age effects. We identified 113 studies reporting results on the relationship between pubertal status and BSR measures, but most of them were not informative for our review question because they did not properly adjust for age effects, or manipulated pubertal data in ways that no longer reflected the participants’ pubertal status. The 26 remaining eligible studies used a heterogeneous set of tasks and questionnaires to assess BSR-related capacities. More than a third of these studies found no pubertal effects, while the remainder reported a mix of positive and negative effects, with few clear patterns. Additionally, there were common methodological shortcomings in this literature that significantly limited the strength of the evidence. So, despite indirect evidence for pubertal effects on BSR, our review showed a lack of strong direct evidence for substantial effects. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for current theories of BSR development during adolescence, and present suggestions for dealing with the current methodological shortcomings in future studies.