Social behaviour and cognitive performance of overweight preschool children as estimated by parents and nursery-school teachers

Objectives. Excess weight and obesity in children are associated with psychosocial complications and have the attributes of psychosomatic illness. The research followed on from Czech and foreign publications about families with overweight and obese children, about the peculiarities of cognitive and social development, and about the psychosocial circumstances that accompany this section of the populace. This paper maps out the existing state of knowledge in the above areas, too. The aim of the research was to verify findings of foreign studies relating to the experiences of overweight preschool children with prejudices about themselves by their peers also among the Czech population. Similar problem was also researched in terms of performance of these children in two cognitive tests and their estimates by adults. Methods. The study compared the results of the Pre-school Children Knowledge Test and of the Urban’s Figural Test of Creative Thinking in the group of children with overweight (N=52; BMI percentile ranged 92-95; converted to BMI values M = 18.18; SD = 0.36; age 4-6; M=4.62; SD=0.49), their estimates by parents and kindergarten teachers and in the control group of children with normal weight (N=46; BMI percentile ranged 11-72; converted to BMI values M = 15.38; SD = 0.52; age 4-6; M=4.53; SD=0.58). Observation of Social Expressions of both groups of children in a free play situation was performed, too. Results of cognitive tests, estimates and observations were evaluated in the mutual context. Processing the data. We carried out a descriptive analysis of all the variables. The standard significance level used in the statistical testing was ?=0.05. Multiple linear regression was performed in the form of a so-called generalized linear model (GLM) in order to underpin the influence of the quantitative variables of social behaviour and the categorical variables of the child’s weight on the difference between the real results of the cognitive tests and the results as estimated by the children’s mothers, fathers ...