The executive functioning of Burundian refugee youth: Associations with individual, family and community factors

Understanding cognitive and language development in refugees: Evidence from displaced syrian children in Turkey

“…Being first to systematically evaluate the effect of displacement trauma on cognitive development, this study surprisingly revealed that poverty was a better predictor of cognitive development than the refugee status. Their finding was in line with a following study conducted on 11 year-old (Range = 7 -15) Burundian refugees (Scharpf et al, 2022). Interestingly, in the Burundian context, higher levels of self-reported traumatic experiences were associated with better cognitive flexibility and greater PTSD symptoms were associated with better in WM.…”

“…The age of Syrian refugees ranged between 12 and 18 at the time of testing, and they had been in Jordan for about 2.97 years (SD = 0.98), that is, they were about 9 -15 years old at the time of arrival. Similarly, in Scharpf et al (2022) the mean age of refugee children was 12, with the range of 6 -15 and children's adverse experiences were positively correlated with EF skills. A study by Evans and Kim (2007) showed that exposure to poverty in the early childhood, rather than early puberty, causes greater stress dysfunction.…”

“…A study by Evans and Kim (2007) showed that exposure to poverty in the early childhood, rather than early puberty, causes greater stress dysfunction. Indeed, in early years of their lives, typically developing children undergo remarkable changes and become cognitively mature in their cognitive and social skills, including the development of strong executive function skills allowing them to avoid distraction, control their emotions, and focus on tasks, as well as strong social and theory of mind skills facilitating interactions with others (Cahan et al, 2001;Carlson, 2005;Kostandov et al, 2011;Grolnick & Farkas, 2002;Macdonald et al, 2014;Mehnert et al, 2013), especially between the ages of 3 and 8 (for a review, see Kievit, 2020;Woodburn et al, 2021) Thus, it might be argued that the children in Chen et al (2019) and Scharpf et al (2022) had progressed in their neural and cognitive development and built better coping strategies prior to testing since they had passed a critical window for cognitive development.…”

The association between family adversity and youth mental health outcomes

“…Extant research has shown that the family and community environment are particularly important variables when examining the mental health outcomes of adolescents (Daniels & Bryan, 2021; Scharpf et al, 2022). During their transition to adulthood, adolescents typically learn and model the behaviors and values found in their family and community environment, with cultural norms and practices influencing developmental outcomes (Lewis‐Smith et al, 2020).…”