The Canadian 24-hour movement behavior guidelines suggest limited amount of screen use time, an adequate level of physical activity and sufficient sleep to ensure optimal health and quality of life of children and adolescents. A new survey explored how much children with autism spectrum disorder adhere to these guidelines and found that those who do have much better quality of life indicators. The study was published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science.
Autism spectrum disorder is a group of developmental conditions that are characterized by impairments in social interaction, deficits in the development of language and communication abilities and repetitive patterns of activity, behavior and interests. It affects a bit less than 1% of children globally and is somewhat more common in males.
Previous studies have shown that children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders have a lower quality of life compared to their peers with typical mental development. There is a limited amount of research on why that is the case, but these differences have been attributed to factors such as being included in school activities, the level of social impairment, and the severity of the disorder itself.
There is also evidence that lifestyle interventions, like introducing regular physical activities, may improve the quality of life of these children. Alternatively, long screen use times, sedentary behavior and not getting enough sleep might be linked to adverse effects.
To study the relationship between lifestyle and quality of life in children with the autism spectrum disorder, study authors referred to the Canadian 24-hour movement guidelines (24-HMB). These guidelines were developed in response to the recognition that low levels of physical activity, sedentary behavior, and poor sleep quality are linked to overall lower life quality. At the same time, these are behaviors that are more often found in children with autism spectrum disorder than in children not suffering from it.
The study used data from the U.S. 2020 National Survey of Children’s Health of 956 children between 6 and 17 years of age who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the time of the survey. The study used data on several of quality-of-life indicators – learning interest (“How often does this child show interest and curiosity in learning new things?”), adaptation ability (“Does your child have any difficulties concerning dressing or bathing?”), victimization by bullying (“How often during the past 12 months was your child bullied, picked on, or excluded by other children?”), behavioral problems (“Has a doctor, other health care provider, or educator ever told you that your child has behavioral or conduct problems?”), and also on the adherence to the 24-hour movement guidelines.
The guidelines were “(a) a sleep duration of 9 – 11 hours for children aged 5 to 13 years and 8 – 10 hours for adolescents aged 14 to 17 years, (b) children and adolescents accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day, and (c) recreational screen time should be limited to no more than 2 hours per day.” This adherence was divided into 4 categories depending on how many of the guidelines the child meets.
“Overall, 452 participants (45.34%) met one of the 3 recommendations, 216 (22.65%) met two recommendations, whereas only 39 participants (5.04%) met all three recommendations,” the researchers wrote.
Results showed that children that adhered to at least one of the guidelines showed learning interest and curiosity more than twice as often as children who do not meet any of the guidelines.
“Meeting both screen time and physical activity recommendations or both sleep duration and physical activity recommendations was associated with lower odds of repeating any grades,” the researchers wrote. “With respect to adaptive ability, participants who met only the physical activity recommendation were less likely to have difficulties dressing or bathing than those who did not.”
“For participants who met all three recommendations, the odds of being victimized by bullying was lower. Participants who adhered to both sleep duration and physical activity recommendations were less likely to present with severe behavioral problems than those who did not meet those guidelines.”
The study provides an important contribution to the knowledge about factors relevant for the quality of life of children with autism specter disorder. However, it should be taken into account that the design of the study does not allow any cause-and effect conclusions and that most of the key factors were assessed using just a single question.
The study, “Associations between meeting 24-hour movement guidelines and quality of life among children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder”, was authored by Chuidan Kong, Aiguo Chen, Sebastian Ludyga, Fabian Herold, Sean Healy , Mengxian Zhao, Alyx Taylor, Notger G. Muller, Arthur F. Kramer, Sitong Chen, Mark S. Tremblay, and Liye Zou.
