Unfavorable Behaviors in Children Run in Packs! Dietary and Non-Dietary Modulators of Attentional Capacity
Alina Drozdowska1, Michael Falkenstein2, Thomas Lücke1
1Research Department of Child Nutrition, University Hospital of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, St. Josef-Hospital, Ruhr University Bochum, 44791 Bochum, Germany.
Insights
Skipping breakfast and poor sleep habits in children often occur together, negatively impacting attention and eye-hand coordination. These combined lifestyle factors are linked to poorer cognitive performance in school-aged children.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Health
- Cognitive Science
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Children's cognitive performance is influenced by daily behaviors like breakfast consumption.
- Lifestyle habits such as sleep and physical activity are crucial for child development.
- Understanding the interplay of these behaviors is key to supporting children's academic success.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the mediating effects of breakfast behavior and lifestyle habits on children's eye-hand coordination and attention.
- To analyze the relationships between skipping breakfast, physical activity, sleep patterns, and cognitive functions.
- To identify clusters of unfavorable behaviors in school-aged children.
Main Methods:
- Secondary analysis of the CogniDROP study data.
- Inclusion of 5th and 6th-grade students (n=223) from a German comprehensive school.
- Utilized a computerized Visual Attention Task and a questionnaire assessing breakfast habits, physical activity (PA), and sleep quality/duration.
Main Results:
- Nearly 11% of children skipped breakfast, over 9.5% reported poor sleep quality, and 24.9% had insufficient sleep duration.
- Girls exhibited insufficient physical activity levels.
- Sleep duration, bedtime, and PA correlated with skipping breakfast; better sleep quality was linked to faster reaction times in the attention task.
Conclusions:
- Unfavorable lifestyle behaviors in children, such as skipping breakfast, tend to cluster together.
- This clustering of habits, including poor sleep and low physical activity, is associated with impaired eye-hand coordination and attention.
- Interventions addressing multiple lifestyle factors may be beneficial for improving children's cognitive performance.
Abstract:
Children's cognitive performance can be influenced by behaviors such as eating breakfast in the morning. The aim of this analysis was to investigate the mediating effects of breakfast behavior and other lifestyle habits on eye-hand coordination and attention. In a secondary analysis of the CogniDROP study, children from the 5th and 6th grade of a comprehensive school in Germany (n = 223) performed a simple computerized Visual Attention Task and answered a questionnaire about behavioral patterns, i.e., skipping breakfast on a school day, frequency of physical activity (PA) outside school, and nighttime sleep. An association matrix was constructed to show the relationship between the variables. Almost 11% of children left home in the morning without breakfast, more than 9.5% of children reported poor sleep quality, 24.9% slept less than the recommended 9 h, and girls were insufficiently physically active. Sleep duration, bedtime, and PA correlated with skipping breakfast. Better sleep quality was positively related to reaction time in the Visual Attention Task. Overall, the data suggest that unfavorable behaviors in children tend to run in packs, just as skipping breakfast in the morning seems to be associated with other unfavorable habits, which impairs children's eye-hand coordination and attention.
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