The Relationship Between Body Composition Features and Sustained Attention in Children

Background and The change in lifestyle in recent decades has led children to change in body composition, while researchers have shown that physical changes can affect cognitive components. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between some body composition features with sustained attention as one of the components of cognitive function in children.
The method of this study was descriptive and correlational. 100 children aged 7 to 9 years were examined via the body composition and continuous visual performance tests. For data analysis, correlation and regression tests were used.
The results showed that there was a significant relationship between fat percentage, body mass index, trunk fat percentage and waist to hip ratio with omission error and reaction time variability (P Based on the results, each body composition characteristics was associated with a specific component of cognitive function. In this regard, the components associated to the reaction time can be considered in relation to the perceptual motor aspect, while the obesity-related components were associated with the performance accuracy. As a result, there appears to be a specific connection between the body composition features and the cognitive control structures.