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Childhood and adolescence are crucial stages of life, characterized by significant changes that profoundly influence overall development. While positive childhood experiences (PCEs) can help mitigate the effects of adverse events during these formative years, they have not been as thoroughly researched. Then, this systematic review aims to address this gap by organizing the existing literature on PCEs and examining their impact on both positive and negative outcomes in children and adolescents. A search through databases such as B-On, PsycINFO, PubMed, SCOPUS, and Scielo, as well as supplementary searches, identified 30 studies that met the inclusion criteria. The results indicate that most studies were published in the last 4 years, primarily in the USA, and focused on community populations with mixed samples. In addition, the results reveal that among children and adolescents, higher levels of PCEs were associated with better mental health outcomes (e.g., reduced depressive symptoms, anxiety, self-harm, substance use, and suicidal ideation), improved psychosocial outcomes (e.g., enhanced adult functioning and future orientation), better academic achievement (e.g., reduced absenteeism and fewer academic difficulties), and some improvements in physical health (e.g., reduced chronic pain). However, the relationship between PCEs and behavioral outcomes showed mixed results. Strengthening efforts to promote PCEs and resources that support child and adolescent resilience is crucial. Further research involving diverse samples is needed to gain a deeper understanding of the role of PCEs., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Adolescent dating violence (ADV) research has neglected the environmental factors at play in contexts of perpetration. This study, conducted in Chile, investigated the socio-cognitive processes inherent to the relationship between child abuse and ADV perpetration by examining the association between child abuse, impulsivity, reactive aggression, proactive aggression, attitudes that rationalize or justify ADV, and actual ADV perpetration. Data were collected from 655 adolescents using self-reported measures of child abuse, impulsivity, reactive and proactive aggression, attitudes justifying ADV, and ADV perpetration using structural equation modeling. Having experienced child abuse predicted higher levels of impulsivity, which in turn predicted higher levels of aggressive traits, both for reactive and proactive aggression. Proactive aggression predicted higher levels of ADV perpetration, whereas reactive aggression did not. While we did not find that child abuse predicted a greater propensity for ADV, nor that such a disposition indicated a higher level of proactive aggression by influencing ADV perpetration, we did find that a positive attitude toward ADV predicted a higher frequency of ADV perpetration. Our results suggest that the socio-cognitive process underlying ADV involves automatic and complex processes stemming from child abuse, thus linking environmental and individual factors., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)