A137: Meeting 24-Hour Movement Guidelines and Affect Balance in Childrenand Adolescents

<bold>Background/Purpose:</bold> The Canadian 24-hour movement guidelines recommend an adequate level of physical activity, a limited amount of recreational screen time use, and sufficient sleep duration for children and adolescents. Affect balance is essential for children and adolescents’ physical health, psychological health, academic achievement and long-term development. Daily movement behaviors have been shown to influence affect balance with limited research. Whether and how meeting 24-hour movement guidelines relates to affect balance remains unclear. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between meeting 24-hour movement guidelines and affect balance, and to explore the mediating effects of executive function and cognitive reappraisal. <bold>Method:</bold> A total of 530 Chinese children and adolescents with a mean age of 12.95 years (49.81% males) participated in this study. The three components of 24-hour movement behaviors (physical activity, recreational screen time, and sleep) were measured and coded respectively according to guideline recommendations. Meeting 24-hour movement guidelines was handled in terms of continuous variable (0 vs. 1 vs. 2 vs. 3). Participants also completed the Positive and Negative Affect Scale, the Adolescent Executive Function Scale, and the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire. SPSS 26.0 was used for descriptive statistics, univariate analysis of variance and correlation analysis of relevant data. The Hayes’ PROCESS 3.3 macro was used to examine direct and indirect effects between variables. <bold>Results:</bold> Meeting 24-hour movement guidelines showed a significant and positive association with affect balance (<italic>β</italic> = 1.413, <italic>p</italic> = 0.036). Executive function played a mediating effect between meeting 24-hour movement guidelines and affect balance (effect = 1.275, 95% CI: 0.486−2.083). Furthermore, executive function and cognitive reappraisal played sequential mediating effects between meeting 24-hour movement guidelines and affect balance (effect = 0.158, 95% CI: 0.052−0.299). The total indirect effects of execution function and cognitive reappraisal accounted for 55.84% of the total. <bold>Conclusion/Discussion:</bold> Meeting 24-hour movement guidelines promoted affect balance in children and adolescents by influencing executive function and through the sequential mediating effects of executive function and cognitive reappraisal. This study moved beyond prior research and provided a more comprehensive understanding of whether and how meeting 24-hour movement guidelines relates to affect balance. It also provided some enlightenment for the daily behavior management of children and adolescents. Measures should be taken to improve moderate to vigorous physical activity, ensure adequate sleep, and reduce recreational screen time to maintain children and adolescents’ affect balance.