This literature review article examined the psychopathy construct associated to the development of personality in children and adolescents focusing on the incipient diagnostic issues. It was observed that the search for a more appropriate terminology for describing the early deviant manifestations, the building and using of instruments of evaluation directed to psychopathy in youngsters as well as the stability of the symptoms during growth have been recurrent issues in current researches. It can be affirmed that the presence of psychopathy traits in childhood and adolescence still raises doubts, requiring empirical studies which explore the evolutive aspects and the multifactorial etiology, preferentially within the general conception of personality disorders.
personality; childhood and adolescence; anti-social behavior; psychopathy traits