Abstract
Breakfast is often recommended as an integral part of a healthy diet. In most cases, breakfast healthiness accrues from micronutrient intakes. Because of breakfast supremacy in the regular lives, most researches have been conducted to explore the relevance of breakfast and cognitive ability on young children. In this research proposal, I document a planned proposal that seeks to explore the connection between breakfast and children’s cognitive ability. I intend to make use of already performed experiments to make case of the relevant of a good breakfast for steadfast academic performance.
Literature Review for Breakfast and Performance
Education is an important factor in the development of a society. Evidently, the benefits of education go beyond the obvious advantage of improving life chances. Education empowers people not only with the skills, knowledge and means of succeeding in life, but also with the hope of a better productive and sustainable life. Education is thus an important tool in the realization of a prosperous and developing community. In many societies, education serves as a panacea to solving gender based problems such as hunger, overpopulation, preventable diseases and abusive marriages. Like the western world during the Greek and Roman era, educational access is still limited to a small section of the society in the developing countries. While the developed world has made progress in terms of gender equality in education, many developing nations are still plagued by disparity of education between girls and boys.
Durkin (1992) have described breakfast as the most important meal of the day. They argue that breakfast contributes substantially the nutrient intakes and also the energy needs. For children, breakfast consumption has been related to better performance in class. Still, many children across the world go to class without breakfast. One research conducted argued that breakfast intake reduced by fifteen percent between 1965 and 19991. This translated to almost sixty four of adolescents consuming breakfast. The absence of breakfast among children has led to a research conducted to explore cognitive development. Research conducted has indicated a similar pattern of less cognitive development compared to children who regularly took breakfast. The absence of breakfast has an effect on problem solving competency, short term memory, and attention and episodic memory among children. Children with regular consumption of breakfast have a greater diligence and vigilance attention for arithmetic, problem-solving tasks as well as logical reasoning. Similar research conducted on confectionary snacks consumption by children indicates that long term memory loss may be accrued by such foods. Generally, most studies conducted on breakfast show that consumption of breakfast affect cognitive behavior positively (Spring and Digman, 1982).
So why would breakfast be pivotal for the cognitive development of young children? High energy breakfast showed improvements in creativity, physical endurance, mathematical addition, and short term memory. A low- fat high carbohydrate breakfast has the capacity to produce a reduction in subjective fatigue similar to class situation in comparison to a high fat breakfast and a high fiber, carbohydrate- rich meal. The connection between high energy and high fiber carbohydrate rich breakfast improves cognitive performance could be related to their effect on blood glucose levels. Some studies have shown that glucose intake improves cognitive performance (Widenhorn-Muller, Hille,Klink,& Weiland,2008 )
Glucose is prime for brain function perhaps this explains why the nature of glucose presence in the brain would be instrumental in affecting cognitive performance. To give an example, a prolonged elevation of blood glucose would be important in increasing the duration of food induced cognitive enhancement. One way of assessing the use of glucose the use of GI index, otherwise called Glycemic index. The Glycemic index is a core ascribed to food meal based on blood glucose response after one meal. In most cases, rapidly digested meals such as low-fiber high carbohydrates show initial sharp blood glucose peak (high GI) with an overall lower circulating blood glucose after 2 h-periods. If we use the common US breakfast meals, the most ready to eat cereals have the tendency to have a higher GI score of 32-33 scores. This was done after the experiment was repeated on most U.S males’ adults.
Philips (2005) argued that even with the increasing skepticism, the late 1990’s saw an increase in the number of states, cities and countries that were getting increasing convinced that breakfast meals were important for student performance. Organizations held demonstration programs making breakfast free to all students in some schools. This approach, called universal free school breakfast (USB), was implemented in more than one thousand schools and a dozen school districts in the1990’s. In the years that have passed, some of these initiatives have been evaluated with formal reports that shed light on the impact of breakfast on student outcomes. Additional light has been shed by more than one hundred studies about breakfast published in academic journals over the past five years. It is therefore an opportunity time to survey the landscape to see what has been discovered about the relationship between breakfast and performance since the late 1990. For the most part, the outcome was pretty obvious, that good breakfast was relevant to good academic performance in school (Donahoe & Benton D, 2000).
Wurtman (1986) recorded that most researches indicate that there are two conceivable biological mechanisms by which breakfast may affect brain function and cognitive test performance. One involves metabolic changes associated with an extended overnight fast to maintain the availability of fuel another nutrients to the central nervous system. The other involves the long-term salutary changes that breakfast may have on nutrient intake and nutritional status, which in turn could affect cognition. For example, it is known that repletion of iron stores and rehabilitation from anemia result in improved school performance in tests of memory and visual attention .The most widely studied tasks used in determining the effects of breakfast omission are those relating to short-term memory. Diminished speed and accuracy on tests of visual and auditory short-term memory, immediate recall, delayed recall, recognition memory, and spatial memory were observed in children and young adults (3, 5, 9–12). Skipping breakfast also influenced cognitive functions unrelated to memory. The no-breakfast condition was also associated with a decline in performance on a verbal fluency test (5, 15) and tasks of arithmetic, continuous visual stimulus , and stimulus discrimination . Although the reported data do not lend themselves to direct comparative analysis, the pooled findings suggest that attention processes are also vulnerable to a prolonged fast.
Do the effects of breakfast on cognition, observed in short-term studies, translate into long-term scholastic benefits? It seems so, but no definitive conclusions are warranted. Three studies that attempted to answer this question had design limitations, but all three reported improved scores on some of the scholastic tests given in schools participating in a breakfast program. Improvements were observed in these studies as follows: in overall combined scores of language, reading, and math in a study of US low-income students, in arithmetic in a study of rural Jamaican schoolchildren, and in vocabulary scores in a study of undernourished Peruvian children . In all three evaluations, participation in the school breakfast program significantly increased school attendance. This factor alone could contribute to enhanced long-term scholastic achievement, simply because improved attendance exposes children to a learning environment for a longer period (Kaplan, 2000).
According to popular tradition, a person having no breakfast (fasting) will not have enough energy to start morning tasks. This assertion has been tested in a series of experimental studies with the subject himself as a control. The studies carried out by Pollitt and colleagues2, 3 on9±11-year-old middle-class American children showed that fasting had a negative effect on visual perception and work memory capacity. Similar results were observed in studies carried out in other developed countries. However, researchers in Jamaica and Peru found that the effect of fasting is not uniform, but depends on the basal nutritional status of the subject. The study in Jamaica followed the design used by Pollitt et al.2,3 and compared three groups of children: (1) children whose height-forage was two standard deviations below (22SD) the reference group of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS); (2) children whose height-for-age was above 21SD from the reference group (NCHS) (control group); and (3) children with a clear history of early severe malnutrition according to the local register of the Nutritional Care Unit. Groups 1 and 3 showed similar results and thus were merged into a single group called ‘nutritional risk group'. The nutritional risk group had poorer scores for language coding and fluency when fasting. The control group had similar results when fasting for these capacities; conversely they improved their scores for arithmetic tasks when fasting.
Based on available evidence, we can draw the following conclusions. Breakfast consumption has a short-term effect in improving selected learning skills, especially work memory. This effect is more evident in children with previous malnutrition and may not be detected another children. School breakfast has a positive effect on the nutritional status of the children involved; this may show in weight and height gain in deprived populations (e.g. rural areas in developing countries. School breakfast programs have a positive effect on school attendance and probably on dropout rates. The effect of breakfast consumption on school performance depends on the interaction between the program student characteristics (malnutrition) and school organization. Unless the school setting guarantees minimum quality standard, the benefits of breakfast consumption will not be evident in performance in complex areas like language or mathematics.
Results from this study also suggest that breakfast composition may affect younger children more dramatically than older children. This is evident in the increased number of measures affected. Both older and younger children showed improved spatial and short-term memory after oatmeal. In younger children oatmeal also improved performance on a task of auditory memory. These performance differences may be due to differences in metabolism rates between older and younger children, or differences in the amount of physical stress following an overnight fast. Younger children rated themselves as less hungry after oatmeal than after ready-to-eat cereal or no breakfast an hour later, but 2 h later showed no differences in hunger ratings. In contrast, older children rated themselves as less hungry after either meal than after no breakfast both 1 and 2 h after eating. These differences may also be a result of the amount of food needed to suppress hunger across different age groups.
Although it is still not possible to draw definitive conclusions about the short-term benefits of a single breakfast on learning it does seem likely that they are there. As for long-term benefits of usual breakfast consumption, the evidence for a connection between breakfast eating and both academic and health outcomes is now very strong. The evidence that regular breakfast eating is associated with better nutrient intake is even stronger. Recent findings showing the positive impact of breakfast on energy, combined with those about health habits and the overall nutritional contribution of breakfast point to a more complex but hopefully more comprehensive model for the mechanisms through which breakfast provides its impacts. First of all, for a number of key cognitive processes, eating breakfast provides energy that is available both immediately and over the course of the morning. Second of all, as a health habit, eating breakfast is associated with having other health habits, the combined total of which can have a profound impact on health. Third of all, same day breakfast eating miscorrelated with and a component of the habit of regular breakfast eating and fourth, it is one of just a few opportunities to obtain a full range of nutrients
Many of the researchers in this review provided adequate support for why this topic needs to be addressed and researched further. Mahoney et al. (2005) found through the results of a survey, that only 58 percent of children reported that they regularly eat breakfast. Limitations to these studies may be related to the methods used to collect data on the assessment of mood, alertness, and interest levels. The questionnaires used in some of the studies were self-reporting which may have affected the validity of some of the data. Based on the review of current research, it can be concluded that eating a healthy breakfast has a positive effect on student performance and learning. In order to gain a clearer, more complete understanding of the impact of breakfast on student learning, additional research must be done to distinguish the specific types of breakfast foods and their corresponding nutritional composition which may lead to these differences ( Kim et all, 2003).
In reference to a research on breakfast and academic competency, the researcher must put in consideration that, he or she is examining a trend or behavior among children. This complicates the task because there is limited application of different research methodologies. Children are minors in the community and thus, one cannot rely on them as sources of reliable information. From this situation, the primary research methodology will be observation and surveys. However, researchers also have to examine guardians of children between the age of two and three based on their assessment. The most appropriate methodology in examining these individuals will be through open questionnaires. Closed questionnaires will also be applicable too in situations where there is the need to ensure certainty.
The research will invest time identifying how children invent music, do their music, have reading skills, and math competency among other factors affecting their creativity, and ways to improve their performance. This will help the researcher in identifying inputs in academic competency. With this, results will be viable for further empirical studies.
Cross Generational Study: Action Research
I find it favourable to conduct my research through a combination of three research methodologies. This research will be conducted in Missouri Community Centre. The centre has children of various ages from age two to ages six. There are kids of various ethnicities varying from Indian, African American and White.
I intend to measure up children’s performance on two groups. The first group will have taken breakfast while the second group will have no breakfast. I will then measure how much the students performed on the tests overtime and record the correlation with whether they took breakfast or if they did not.
Other research methodologies applications
Observation
Observation will be applied in areas where the researcher needs coordinative information. This is where other data collection methodologies are not applicable. However, this data collection methodology is highly discouraged, because it is easily biased. With this in mind, the researcher should avoid prejudgment. This will enhance the reliability of the research.
Video recording
This is the dominant data collection methodology. The researcher will record most all significant information in the field. Video recording ensures that information is available for future retrieval; it is also highly convenient.
Questionnaire
This will target any grown-up resourceful individual in the research field. This is because questionnaires require awareness for one to give reliable information.
Findings
The research will use the collected information to draw a conclusion based on the theory of the research. The information may be analyzed in different formats using graphs, pie charts, or any other statistical analysis method. Trehub (2003) argues that there is a need to examine the research and draw the conclusion in reference to other research under the same line.
Storage and destruction of data
This is a research section with admirable advancement. After collection of the information, the researcher should save the data in an electronic media. This reduces bulkiness as well as risks of losing the data. However, data back-up is crucial; the most convenient option is saving the formation in the email or uploading it on a website. All identities will be protected to ensure anonymity, and all information will remain confidential.
Ethics and Research
In the recent years, researchers have been going against the provision by human rights’ bodies. This is where research exposes the research individuals into compromising situations. This has called for concerns, where ethics must be considered in every research. The researcher must respect the situation that he or she is examining young individuals. The research should not affect the normal proceedings of children involved in the research. It is also advisable to involve the guardians of these children, so as they are not abused by the researchers.
Cultural sensitivity
This research should not target a particular cultural group. It is also necessary to consider correct cultural protocols to enhance safety.
Conclusion
An ideal research report results from proper planning; this calls to awareness on the key elements in incorporate in the research proposal. The researcher should restrict his time within the proposal to save time. This will also reduce chances of collecting unnecessary information. Proposals also act as a tool in ensuring that the researcher in ready to get into the field.
References
Kim, H.Y., Frongillo, E.A., Han, S.S., Oh, S.Y., Kim, W.K., Jang, Y.A., Won, H.S., Lee, H.S., & Kim, S.H. (2003). Academic performance of Korean children is associated with dietary behaviours and physical status. Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 12(2), 186-192. doi:
Mahoney, C., Taylor, H., Kanarek, R., & Samuel, P. (2005). Effect of breakfast composition on cognitive processes in elementary school children. Journal of Physiology and Behavior, 85, 635-645. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2005.06.023
Phillips, G.W. (2005). Does eating breakfast affect the performance of college students on biology exams? Bioscene, 30(4), 15-19. doi:
Wesnes, K.A., Pincock, C., Richardson, D., Helm, G., & Hails, S. (2003). Breakfast reduces declines in attention and memory over the morning in school children. Appetite, 41, 329-331. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2003.08.009
Widenhorn-Muller, K., Hille, K., Klink, J., & Weiland, U. (2008). Influence of having breakfast on cognitive performance and mood in 13 to 20 year old high school bstudents: results of a crossover trial. Pediatrics, 122, 279-284. doi: 10.1542/peds.2007-0944
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