Movement Behavior and Emotion Regulation in Young Children: A Daily Diary Study

• In Event: Leveraging Innovative Person-centered Approaches to Study the Antecedents and Consequences of Parenting and Child Behaviors

Abstract

Introduction: Previous research showed that physical activity, screen time, and sleep duration, collectively known as movement behaviors, are three important aspects of evaluating children's healthy lifestyles (Wang et al., 2021). However, most studies conducted variable-centered or criterion-based methods for examining the additive contribution of dichotomous independent factors, which can only group individuals based on dichotomous cut-point criteria (e.g., ≥ 10h /day of sleep duration). Given this limitation, a person-centered approach may be useful to explore behavior patterns, which can identify distinct groups characterized by a common pattern in a set of variables, such as (multilevel) latent profile analyses (LPA).
Additionally, previous studies indicated that regular physical activity, reduced screen time and adequate sleep are more likely to be associated with improved emotional regulation. However, to our knowledge, there are no studies that collectively examine the associations between three movement behaviors (i.e., physical activity, screen time, and sleep duration) and emotion regulation. The current study intends to determine if patterns of movement behaviors are associated with differences in same-day, next-day, and cross-day change of emotion regulation.
Hypotheses: 1) There are unique movement behavior profiles existing among young children. 2) Patterns of daily movement behavior relate to same-day, next-day, and cross-day changes in emotion regulation.
Study population: Three preschools in the same district were randomly selected from Shenzhen, China, which serve families with social-economic backgrounds that are representative of the city. A total of 482 participants gave consent and participated in the study. Because mothers were usually more familiar with children’s daily routines, we used only data from mothers, resulting in a total of 275 participants in the final sample. In total, 3,425 daily questionnaires were completed, corresponding to a compliance rate of 89% (3,425/ (275*14)). The age of the participants’ children ranged from 35 to 83 months (M = 57.22, SD = 10.40), and 55% of them were boys.
Methods: Children’s daily after-preschool movement behavior and emotional regulation (emotion positivity and emotional negativity) were gathered through maternal reports. Multilevel latent profile analyses were applied to identify profiles (hypothesis 1). Daily profile membership of children’s movement behavior was used to predict emotion regulation in three regression models: (1) same-day level, (2) next-day level, and (3) cross-day change (i.e., predicting next-day level after controlling for the same-day level), controlling for child age, gender, and parental education (hypothesis 2).
Results: Comparing model indices, a four-profile model solution was appropriate and was selected for theoretical interpretation and further analysis: the “Less Sleep and Screen” profile; “High Need” profile; “Less Sport and Screen Free” profile; and “Intensive Sport and Screen” profile (see Table 1). For the same-day and next-day levels of emotion positivity, there were no significant differences among the four daily profiles. However, daily profiles significantly predicted the cross-day change of emotion positivity. For the same-day and next-day levels of emotion negativity, differences among profiles were found in the pairwise comparison. For the cross-day change in emotion negativity, no significant differences were found among four daily profiles (see Table 2).

Authors

• Sha Xie, Shenzhen University
  Presenting Author

• Xinli Chi

• Mengya Xia, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

• Shiyun Chen, University College London

• Mengyun He, Shenzhen University

• Hong Yin, Shenzhen University