Adherence to 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years and associations with social-cognitive development among Australian preschool children

Abstract

BackgroundThe new Australian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years recommend that, for preschoolers, a healthy 24-h includes: i) ≥180 min of physical activity, including ≥60 min of energetic play, ii) ≤1 h of sedentary screen time, and iii) 10–13 h of good quality sleep. Using an Australian sample, this study reports the proportion of preschool children meeting these guidelines and investigates associations with social-cognitive development.MethodsData from 248 preschool children (mean age = 4.2 ± 0.6 years, 57% boys) participating in the PATH-ABC study were analyzed. Children completed direct assessments of physical activity (accelerometry) and social cognition (the Test of Emotional Comprehension (TEC) and Theory of Mind (ToM)). Parents reported on children’s screen time and sleep. Children were categorised as meeting/not meeting: i) individual guidelines, ii) combinations of two guidelines, or iii) all three guidelines. Associations were examined using linear regression adjusting for child age, sex, vocabulary, area level socio-economic status and childcare level clustering.ResultsHigh proportions of children met the physical activity (93.1%) and sleep (88.7%) guidelines, whereas fewer met the screen time guideline (17.3%). Overall, 14.9% of children met all three guidelines. Children meeting the sleep guideline performed better on TEC than those who did not (mean difference [MD] = 1.41; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.36, 2.47). Children meeting the sleep and physical activity or sleep and screen time guidelines also performed better on TEC (MD = 1.36; 95% CI = 0.31, 2.41) and ToM (MD = 0.25; 95% CI = −0.002, 0.50; p = 0.05), respectively, than those who did not. Meeting all three guidelines was associated with better ToM performance (MD = 0.28; 95% CI = −0.002, 0.48, p = 0.05), while meeting a larger number of guidelines was associated with better TEC (3 or 2 vs. 1/none, p < 0.02) and ToM performance (3 vs. 2, p = 0.03).ConclusionsStrategies to promote adherence to the 24-Hour Movement Behaviour Guidelines for the Early Years among preschool children are warranted. Supporting preschool children to meet all guidelines or more guidelines, particularly the sleep and screen time guidelines, may be beneficial for their social-cognitive development.

Quality of Life and Meeting 24-h WHO Guidelines Among Preschool Children in Singapore

“…9.6 vs. 5%) but more preschool children in Singapore met none of the guidelines (i.e.12.6 vs. 6.1%) compared to the findings of the cited study. The present results contrasted to results of other studies where higher proportions of preschool children (12.7-14.9%) in Canada (Chaput et al 2017a, b) and Australia (Cliff et al 2017) respectively, met all the 24-h WHO guidelines.…”

“…Similar studies show that among preschool children, the proportions of those meeting the 10-13 h of night-time sleep are greater than those reported in the present research (see Table 1). For instance, Tamana et al (2019) reported that 84% of the 2427 children polled at 5 years old had 10-13 h of parent-reported night-time sleep, with other studies showing a range of 83.9-88.7% (Chaput et al 2017a, b;Cliff et al 2017) of children meeting the sleep guideline. Differences in sleep among preschool children are an interplay between 'culture (and therefore behaviour) and biology' in explaining children's sleep (Jenni and O'Connor 2005).…”

Proportion of kindergarten children meeting the WHO guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep and associations with adiposity in urban Beijing

“…The proportion of children meeting the physical activity guidelines varies across countries. Our finding were close to one Canadian study with 803 pre-schoolers (61.8%) [24], whereases the proportion of pre-schoolers meeting physical activity guideline were much lower (19.3 and 11.0% respectively) in another Canadian (n = 539) [40] and Belgian study (n = 595) [25] but higher (93.1%) in one Australian study (n = 248) [41]. In addition, in a recent Chinese study with 3030 preschoolers, 72.9% of the children had at least 1 h of MVPA and 35.3% had at least 3 h of total physical activity [42].…”

“…The variety in the proportion across studies may be primarily due to the differences in accelerometer data collection (e.g., different type of physical activity monitors (e.g., Actical vs. Actigraph), hip vs. wrist wearing, data collected in 15-s epoch vs. in 60 s epoch) and data reduction (e.g., using different cut-point for light physical activity/MVPA) between studies, which would result in different estimates of physical activity [40]. For example, the mentioned Australian study used similar procedures (i.e., 24-h accelerometry over a week, waistworn Actigraph accelerometers, data collected in 15 s epoch, same cut-point for MVPA) as our study but used different cut-point for light-intensity physical activity (25/15 s vs. 200 c/15 s in our study) [41]. This may explain that the similar estimates of MVPA (1.6 h vs. 1.7 h) but less total physical activity (3.3 h versus 6.2 h) in our participants and therefore a lower proportion of children meeting the physical activity guideline, compared to the Australian pre-schoolers.…”

Feasibility and acceptability of a home‐based intervention to promote nurturing interactions and healthy behaviours in early childhood: The Amagugu Asakhula pilot study

“…Feedback from the service providers and beneficiaries of Amagugu Asakhula suggests that future research with this intervention should focus on the following outcomes: nurturing interactions between caregivers and children; a decrease in unhealthy snacks; bedtime routines to increase sleep; and reduced screen time. Considering the role these play in obesity prevention (Lanigan, ) and cognitive development (Carson et al, ; 2016; Cliff et al, ), plus the positive impact of nurturing interactions on early childhood development (Britto et al, ; Daelmans et al, ). This future research could help to establish whether this type intervention has the potential to promote healthy weight and improve cognitive outcomes in this age group, thereby addressing two pervasive global challenges.…”