More exercise and less screen time are associated with better executive function in young children

Adherence to the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines on diet and physical activity has something to do with young children’s ability to remember, plan, pay attention, move between tasks, and coordinate their thoughts and actions, new research finds I investigated whether function.

As reported in The Journal of Pediatrics, the study found that 24-month-old children who spent less than 60 minutes looking at a screen each day and who were engaged in daily physical activity met guidelines. We found that executive function was better than children without. .

“Executive function underpins our ability to engage in goal-directed behavior,” says Arden McMath, professor of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and graduate student in food science and human nutrition. Naiman Khan, who led the study with Professor Sharon, said: Donovan.

“It includes abilities such as inhibitory control that allows us to control thoughts, emotions and behavior, sufficient time to complete a task, working memory that allows us to keep information in mind, cognitive flexibility, and other abilities that allow us to control our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and to achieve a task or conflict.” Toggles attention between requests to
“We sought to test the hypothesis that healthy weight status and adherence to AAP guidelines on diet and physical activity extend to higher executive function in children as young as 24 months of age.

Through its Bright Futures initiative, AAP aims to ensure that children spend less than 60 minutes looking at screens each day, engage in at least 60 minutes of physical activity, consume at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, and minimize sugar consumption. or eliminate it. sweetened beverages.

Previous research has linked adherence to physical activity guidelines, screen time, and food quality to executive functioning in school-age or adolescent children, McMath said.

“We focused on early stages of child development to explore whether and how early these associations start early in life,” she said. .

Families of 356 young children who participated in the new study were participants in the STRONG KIDS 2 cohort study conducted at the University of Iowa. This is a long-term investigation of interdependent factors influencing dietary and weight trajectories in children tracked from birth. Up to 5 years old. The study uses a parent survey and data on her child collected at eight time points over a five-year period, including when the child was 24 months old.

“The study asked parents to report on several aspects of their children’s daily habits, such as screen time, how physically active they were, and whether they ate at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables. It’s a sugary drink,” McMath said.

Parents also completed standard surveys designed to measure the infant’s executive function. They were asked to assess their ability to plan and organize their thoughts, regulate their emotional reactions, control their impulses, retain information, and shift their attention between tasks.

The team used structural equation modeling techniques to assess direct and indirect relationships between adherence to AAP guidelines and infant executive function.

“We found that children who spent less than 60 minutes of screen time per day were significantly more capable of actively controlling their own cognition than children who spent more time staring at their phones, iPads, televisions, or computers.” They showed improvements in inhibitory control, working memory, and overall executive function.”

Researchers also found that toddlers who were physically active every day performed significantly better on tests of working memory than those who were not.

Although this study did not find a significant relationship between weight status and executive functioning in children, in older children the relationship between health The authors wrote that it was suggested that it may precede the observation of the relationship.

“The impact of healthy behavior on cognitive performance appears to be evident in early childhood, especially in behaviors involving exercise and sedentary time,” added Khan.-ANI