The Influence Of Eating Behavior On Children's Executive Function: The Mediating Role Of BMI Index

Execution function refers to the psychological process in which the individual consciously controls his thoughts and actions.The executive function is an important aspect of children's cognitive development and has important significance for children's future learning and living.With the gradual deepening of research,researchers generally realized that the development of executive functions is not only inseparable from the development of psychological theory,language,and memory,but also different childhood developmental disorders,such as abnormal body weight caused by bad eating behaviors.It may cause defects in different aspects of the execution function.Dietary behavior refers to food selection and determination of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of foods.The influence of dietary behaviors on the physical and mental health of individuals is mainly reflected in the excessive tendency of inappropriate responses to bad emotions and pains,reaction to external food-related clues,and consciously try to reduce food intake to control your weight.The body mass index(BMI)is the weight-squared body weight measured in kilograms,measured in kilograms.It is considered to be an easy-to-use screening method that can lead to health problems.BMI,the index reflects the degree of human obesity and is an important measure of health.Some studies have found that there are two correlations between dietary behavior,BMI and executive function,but there have been no studies to discuss the relationship between the three and relationship mechanisms.Therefore,based on summarizing and combing the results of previous studies,this study examined the relationship between the three and tried to propose a theoretical model that describes the influence of dietary behavior on executive function.This study is divided into two parts:literature review and empirical research.The literature review section mainly combed the concept of dietary behavior,BMI,theory development,measurement methods,and research related to executive function,laying a theoretical foundation for empirical research.The empirical study included 126 children from 6 kindergartens in Xi'an.The children's diet was analyzed using the Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire(CEBQ),the BMI formula,and the classic mission paradigm of executive functions.Differences and characteristics of behavior and BMI in terms of gender and age,analyzed and summarized the correlations between dietary behaviors and executive functions,and further established an intermediary model of dietary behavioral influence on executive function using BMI as a mediator,exploring BMI.How the dietary behavior of an intermediary affects the executive function.Research indicates:(1)It was found through the CEBQ test that the scale met the criteria of psychological measurement,had a good level of reliability and validity,had good stability and reliability,and could be used as a measure of children's dietary behavior.Effective tool.(2)By examining children's dietary behavior and BMI on gender and age,it was found that boys scored significantly lower on the dimension of being overfull and slow to eat,and scored significantly higher on food preference than girls.The scores of children of different ages in the "emotional over-diet" dimension were significantly different,and the score differences in the "food liking" dimension were significantly marginal;the gender differences in the BMI were significant,the boys were significantly higher than the girls,and the age differences of the BMI were not significant.(3)After systematically examining the relationship between the BMI,dietary behavior and the dimensions of executive function,it was found that BMI was significantly negatively correlated with working memory,inhibition control,and cognitive flexibility;BMI was significantly negatively correlated with slow eating.There was a significant positive correlation between BMI and food response,food preference and emotional overeating.There was a significant negative correlation between inhibition control and food response.There was a significant positive correlation between cognitive flexibility and slow eating.(4)Tests of mediating effect of BMI on regression analysis and Bootstrap test found that children's BMI was between the slow eating dimension and the cognitively flexible dimension,the food response dimension and the inhibition control dimension,and the emotional excess diet dimension and inhibition.There is a complete mediation between the control dimensions.Therefore,children's dietary behavior is highly correlated with the BMI,and there is a large gender difference.The feeding methods of parents(or caregivers)need to be reasonably changed;the BMI is closely linked to the children's executive function.While striving to maintain the normal weight of children,it is also necessary to focus on training children to perform executive functions.