A comparative study of performance in simple and choice reaction time tasks between obese and healthy-weight children.
Obese children need extra seconds to start and stop movements, so build that wait time into your teaching.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ilse and colleagues asked two groups of elementary-age kids to press a button as fast as they could. One group had obesity, the other had healthy weight.
Each child did two computer tasks: a simple reaction game and a choice game. The computer measured how long they took to start moving and to finish the press.
What they found
Obese children moved slower on every measure. They waited longer before starting and took more time to finish the press.
They also played it safe. They waited until they were very sure before pressing, trading speed for fewer mistakes.
How this fits with other research
Wagner et al. (2011) saw the same motor gap in older kids. They found obese teens were more likely to fail balance tests, especially boys. Together the two papers show the weight-motor link is steady from childhood to adolescence.
Petrovic et al. (2016) looked at ADHD and weight. Surprisingly, kids with ADHD in their sample were less overweight than kids with motor delays. This twist reminds us to check both diagnoses before blaming weight alone for clumsy moves.
Vos et al. (2013) used the same lab stop-task setup with ADHD children. Like the obese kids, the ADHD group was slow to stop a response. The two studies side-by-side suggest different conditions can hit the same brake pedal in the brain.
Why it matters
If a child with obesity seems sluggish during drills, the issue may be motor timing, not lack of motivation. Give them a touch more wait time before prompting again. Add balance and quick-start games to your session plan. These small tweaks honor their processing speed and keep instruction upbeat.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigated weight status related differences in executive functions and movement execution to determine whether or not childhood obesity is associated with impaired perceptual-motor function. Nineteen obese (OB) children (10 ♂ and 9 ♀, aged 6-12 years) and nineteen gender and age matched healthy-weight (HW) peers performed two computer-based reaction time tasks. For both the simple and four choice reaction time (SRT/CRT) task condition, absolute mean reaction time (RT) and movement time (MT) were determined and expressed as a percentage of total response time (RsT). During the SRT task, OB children were intrinsically slower than their HW peers as reflected by a significantly higher absolute RT, MT and RsT. In the CRT task, however, between-group differences were only present for RT and RsT, whereas absolute MT was comparable among OB and HW participants. As a result, the relative temporal structure of RsT significantly differed between BMI groups, with a greater RT percentage among the OB children. During the CRT condition, OB children probably await final decision-making with regard to the execution of their response movement, which then no longer needs to be adjusted. Our results therefore indicate the use of a more conservative strategy within the OB group, suggesting that childhood obesity is associated with impaired perceptual-motor function. Besides the widely accepted mechanical explanation, a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying OB children's motor incompetence is needed to set up appropriate interventions to tackle this deficit and indirectly address associated health-related problems.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.04.016