Mother-child dyadic influences of affect on everyday movement behaviors: evidence from an ecological momentary assessment study

Abstract

Background: Research has shown that affect is associated with everyday movement behaviors in children and adults. However, limited work to date has investigated dyadic influences of momentary affect on moderate-tovigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary time among children and their mothers using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Methods: Mothers and their children (eight to 12-years-old at baseline) from the Los Angeles metropolitan area participated in a longitudinal study with six semi-annual measurement waves across three years. During each measurement wave, mothers and children reported momentary negative and positive affect via a custom smartphonebased EMA application across seven days (randomly sampled up to eight times per day). Each dyad member's momentary affective states were used to predict their own and the other dyad member's accelerometer-measured MVPA and sedentary time in the prompt-matched 45-min time window. Multilevel modeling within the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) framework was applied to accommodate the nested dyadic nature of the data. Results: At the within-subject level, when children had higher-than-usual positive affect, they engaged in greater MVPA and less sedentary time in the prompt-matched 45-min window (actor effects; ps < .001). When mothers experienced higher-than-usual positive affect, they engaged in more sedentary time in the same 45-min window (actor effect; p < .001). Children's higher-than-usual positive affect also predicted more MVPA time of their mothers (partner effect; p < .05). At the between-subjects level, for mothers who reported higher average negative affect than other mothers, their children overall had less MVPA and more sedentary time (partner effects ps < .05). Conclusions: This study extends the literature by demonstrating that mothers' and children's everyday physical activity and sedentary time are not only associated with their own affective states, but also may be influenced by the affective states of each other. Our findings suggest that affective states have the potential to influence movement behaviors in mother-child dyads' everyday lives. Affective underpinnings of physical activity and sedentary behaviors should be further studied in order to develop family-based intervention strategies to influence these behaviors.

Adolescents’ sedentary time, affect, and contextual factors: An ecological momentary assessment study

“…responding to EMA surveys) among interval-based EMA research, ranging from 44 to 83%, and compliance is infrequently reported as documented in a systematic review of interval-based EMA studies [ 19 ]. Compliance of the current sample (40%, 10–16 years) is lower than other EMA studies in young adolescents (70–80%, 8–12 years) [ 35 , 38 ] but comparable to another EMA study in a similar adolescent population (44%, 12–17 years) [ 39 ]. Therefore, the lower compliance in the current study may be indicative of the older sample.…”

“…Age was negatively related to positive affect, which may be a result of the age-related decline in physical activity levels and affective state. Older adolescents (12–18 years) report higher amounts of sedentary time compared to younger adolescents (< 12 years) [ 35 ], which may be the result of shifting activities and spending time in differing environments as adolescents age [ 4 ], including less time outdoors [ 8 ], which may translate to less time outdoors at home. Therefore, as adolescents become more sedentary at home, either due to or in tandem with their changing schedule, their overall positive affective state may decrease.…”

Infusing Physical Activity into Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices

“…Providing greater opportunities to engage in physical activity during the school day-even in short bursts-enhances academic achievement, improves ontask behavior, and increases attention (Howie, Beets, & Pate, 2014;Howie, Schatz, & Pate, 2015;Mahar, 2011;Pontifex et al, 2013). For young children, physical activity can help them regulate their emotions and behavioral self-regulation (McGowan et al, 2020(McGowan et al, , 2021aYang et al, 2020). In sum, there is strong empirical evidence that physical activity enhances children's self-regulation.…”

“…Young children with active caregivers-parents and teachers alike-are also more likely to be active throughout development (Yang et al, 2020). Early childhood educators can model physically active behaviors and encourage children's physical activity by participating in the activities themselves.…”

Digital Technologies for Emotion-Regulation Assessment and Intervention: A Conceptual Review

“…Furthermore, these technologies are ideally suited to the study of emotion-regulation socialization, or the process by which a child learns how to regulate emotions on the basis of interactions with their caregivers (Hajal et al, 2020). For example, in a recent study, mother-child dyads' physical activity and emotional state were monitored over a 7-day window, and results demonstrated associations not only between an individual's physical activity and the individual's own affective state but also between an individual's physical activity and the affective states of others (Yang et al, 2020). For children in particular, this finding points to an important consideration regarding how influences outside the individual (e.g., parental) may influence one's affective state and how novel methods outlined in this review may inform the knowledge of this developmental process.…”