Background Physical activity intervention and watching natural environment videos have been proven to improve young children’s attention levels. However, evidence comparing the improvement effects of different combinations of the two activities has rarely been reported. By comparing the differences in the improvement effects of four combinations of physical activities and watching natural environment videos on young children’s attention levels, this study can enrich the evidence in this research field and also provide a reference for arranging effective intervention methods for children’s attention recovery between classes. Method A total of 152 children aged 4 to 6 years were recruited and randomly divided into four intervention groups: (1) physical activity intervention first and thereafter watching a natural environment video group (activity + video group), (2) watching a natural environment video first and thereafter the physical activity intervention group (video + activity group), (3) physical activity-based group, and (4) natural environment video-based group. Physical activity involved 4 min of moderate-intensity basic physical fitness combination training. The subjects wore the Pico Neo pioneer version of the VR glasses all-in-one machine to watch a natural environment video. Thereafter, population sociological variables and daily physical activity levels were investigated. Auditory and visual sustained attention tests were performed before and after intervention in each group. Result The auditory attention post-test scores of the four groups showed an improvement trend compared with the pretest scores. In particular, the activity + video group (F = 10.828; ɳp2 = 0.226; p = 0.002) and natural environment video-based group (F = 9.452; ɳp2 = 0.203; p = 0.004) have the best improvement effect. For visual attention, only the activity + video group showed a significant improvement trend (F = 4.287; ɳp2 = 0.104; p = 0.045), while the other three groups showed a downward trend in scores. Conclusions Among the different intervention combinations, the physical activity intervention first and watching natural environment videos thereafter group has the best effect on improving children’s attention during recess. Physical activity interventions at the end of recess adversely affect young children’s visual attention levels at the beginning of the class. Therefore, this study recommends that children should not engage in physical activity interventions in the second half of the class break. Lastly, the current research recommends presenting the content of physical activity interventions first and further improving their attention thereafter by watching natural environment videos.
Recently, deep learning has gained great attention in decoding the neuro-physiological signal. However, which one (classical machine learning or deep learning) has better performance for decoding the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signal is still lack of full verification. Thus, in this paper, we systematically compared the performance of many classical machine learning methods and deep learning methods in fNIRS data processing for decoding the mental arithmetic task. The classical machine learning methods such as decision tree, linear discriminant analysis (LDA), support vector machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and ensemble methods with strict feature extraction and screening, were used for performance comparison, while the long short-term memory-fully convolutional network (LSTM-FCN) method as a representative of deep leaning methods was applied. Results showed that the classification performance of SVM was the best among the classical machine learning methods, achieving that the average accuracy of the subject-related/unrelated were 91.0% and 83.0%, respectively. Furthermore, the classification accuracy of deep learning was significantly better than that of the involved classical machine learning methods, where the accuracy of deep learning could reach 95.3% with subject-related condition and 97.1% with subject-unrelated condition, respectively. Thus, this paper has totally showed the excellent performance of LSTM-FCN as a representative of deep learning in decoding brain signal from fNIRS dataset, which has outperformed many classical machine learning methods.
Mindfulness training has been found to enable cognitive and emotional awareness and diminish emotional distraction and cognitive rigidity. However, the existing intervention studies have largely focused on school children, adolescents, and adults, leaving young children unexplored. This study examined the influence of mindfulness training on young children using the one-group pretest-posttest design. Altogether 31 Chinese preschoolers (Mage = 67.03 months, SD = 4.25) enrolled in a 5-week, twice-per-week mindfulness training. Their cognitive shifting, inhibitory control, and working memory were examined using a battery of executive function tasks. And their brain activations in the region of interest during the tasks were measured using fNIRS before and after the intervention. Results showed that their cognitive shifting and working memory tasks performance significantly improved, and their activation in the DLPFC significantly changed. Implications for this study were also included.
Executive function (EF) includes a set of higher-order abilities that control one’s actions and thoughts consciously and has a protracted developmental trajectory that parallels the maturation of the frontal lobes, which develop speedily over the preschool period. To fully understand the development of EF in preschoolers, this study examined the relationship among the three domains of executive function (cognitive shifting, inhibitory control, and working memory) to test the applicability of the unity–diversity model in preschoolers using both behavioral and fNIRS approaches. Altogether, 58 Chinese preschoolers (34 boys, 24 girls, Mage = 5.86 years, SD = 0.53, age range = 4.83–6.67 years) were administered the Dimensional Card Change Sort (DCCS), go/no-go, and missing scan task. Their brain activations in the prefrontal cortex during the tasks were examined using fNIRS. First, the behavioral results indicated that the missing scan task scores (working memory) correlated with the DCCS (cognitive shifting) and go/no-go tasks (inhibitory control). However, the latter two did not correlate with each other. Second, the fNIRS results demonstrated that the prefrontal activations during the working memory task correlated with those in the same regions during the cognitive shifting and inhibitory control tasks. However, the latter two still did not correlate. The behavioral and neuroimaging evidence jointly indicates that the unity–diversity model of EF does apply to Chinese preschoolers.
Objectives Physical activity intervention and watching natural environment videos have been proven to improve young children’s attention level. However, evidence comparing the improvement effects of different combinations of the two has rarely been reported. By comparing the differences in the improvement effects of four combinations of physical activities and watching natural environment videos on the attention level of young children, this study can enrich the evidence in this research field and also provide a reference for arranging effective intervention methods for children’s attention recovery between classes. Method A total of 152 children aged 4 to 6 years were recruited and randomly divided into four intervention groups: (1) physical activity intervention first and thereafter watching the natural environment video group (activity + video group), (2) watching the natural environment video first and thereafter the physical activity intervention group (video + activity group), (3) physical activity-based group, and (4) natural environment video-based group. Physical activity involved 4 minutes of moderate-intensity basic physical fitness combination training. The subjects wore the Pico Neo pioneer version of the VR glasses all-in-one machine to watch the natural environment video. Thereafter, population sociological variables and daily physical activity levels, among others, were investigated. Auditory and visual sustained attention tests were performed before and after the intervention in each group. Result Compared with the pretest scores, the auditory attention post-test scores of the four groups showed an improvement trend. In particular, the “activity + video” group (F = 10.828; ɳp2 = 0.226; p = 0.002) and “natural environmental video-based” group (F = 9.452; ɳp2 = 0.203; p = 0.004) have the best improvement effect. For visual attention, only the “activity + video” group showed a significant improvement trend (F = 4.287; ɳp2 = 0.104; p = 0.045), while the other three groups showed a downward trend in scores. Conclusions Among the different intervention combinations, the physical activity intervention first and watching natural environment videos thereafter group has the best effect on improving children’s attention during recess. Physical activity interventions at the end of recess adversely affect young children’s visual attention levels at the beginning of the class. Therefore, this study recommends that children should not engage in physical activity interventions in the second half of the class break. Lastly, the current research recommends presenting the content of physical activity interventions first and further improving their attention thereafter by watching natural environment videos.
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