A Functional Analysis of Moderate‐to‐vigorous Physical Activity in Young Children

Abstract

Inadequate physical activity increases the risks related to a number of health problems in children, most notably obesity and the corresponding range of associated health problems. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a functional analysis to investigate the effects of several consequent variables on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). We observed the level of MVPA exhibited by 2 preschool children in 4 conditions: alone, attention contingent on MVPA, adult interaction contingent on MVPA, and escape from task demands contingent on MVPA. These four conditions were compared to a naturalistic baseline and to a control condition. Overall, results indicated that the children were most active when attention and interactive play were contingent on MVPA. Social environments that encourage MVPA could be arranged based on this information, with these arrangements tailored to the individual child.

Further evaluation of a functional analysis of moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity in young children

“…Although MVPA occurred most often during interactive play for all participants, elevated levels of MVPA also were observed during the attention condition for two participants (Grace and Greta). The degree to which adult interactions produced elevated levels of MVPA for all participants, both in this study and in Larson et al (), is notable, and these findings have several clinical implications. First, the results suggest that positive reinforcement in the form of both adult engagement and adult attention might play an important role in increasing activity levels for many children.…”

“…The escape condition was included to see if negative reinforcement contingencies would maintain MVPA even though we had no reason to suspect that such contingencies already were occurring. In this study and in Larson et al (), these contingencies were ineffective. Future research might simply eschew the escape condition and focus on social‐positive contingencies, or more specifically match assessment conditions to hypothesized functions based on indirect assessments.…”

“…A range of videos was presented so that observers could practice coding a variety of activities in which children of this age group typically engage. Finally, they coded actual participant videos from a previous study (Larson et al, ) that employed a functional analysis to assess physical activity, so they could practice scoring child activity during the functional analysis and the integrity of the experimenter. For each training phase, observers were required to reach a criterion of 90% agreement with a master score sheet before they moved to the next phase.…”

A New Frontier: Integrating Behavioral and Digital Technology to Promote Health Behavior

“…In addition, as we suggested above, ongoing assessment of an individual's health behavior and its antecedents and consequences may reveal functional relations and therefore more targeted treatment possibilities. As one potential point of departure, recent work by Normand and colleagues has revealed functional relations between physical activity and specific environmental contexts (e.g., social and physical environment) in children (Hustyi et al 2012; Larson et al 2013). This work did not include technology-based methods, but we could imagine a mobile phone-based method to detect location, social context, and physical activity (Burns et al 2011; King et al 2013).…”

Using heart rate as a physical activity metric

“…Another approach to increase children's PA is to determine efficacious social reinforcers for MVPA via functional analysis (Larson, Normand, Morley, & Miller, ; ; Zerger, Normand, Boga, & Patel, ). These researchers found that contingent adult attention, in the form of praise or interactive play, maintained the highest levels of MVPA (defined as engaging in OSRAC Level 4 and 5 behaviors) exhibited by preschool children.…”