Publications by authors named "S R Zubrick"
Article Synopsis
- The study explores how technology use by infants and their mothers impacts child development at 12 months, emphasizing the importance of the entire family context in understanding these influences.
- Findings indicate that increased mobile touchscreen use by infants correlates with poorer development in areas like gross motor skills and problem-solving, while maternal tech use leads to higher infant tech use but doesn't directly affect development scores.
- The research highlights the need to focus on improving parental mental health and overall family dynamics rather than solely targeting technology use to enhance infant developmental outcomes.
Cohort profile: Understanding the influence of early life environments and health and social service system contacts over time and across generations through the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey (WAACHS) Linked Data Study.
BMJ Open
October 2024
Purpose: Despite the volume of accumulating knowledge from prospective Aboriginal cohort studies, longitudinal data describing developmental trajectories in health and well-being is limited. The linkage of child and carer cohorts from a historical cross-sectional survey with longitudinal health-service and social-service administrative data has created a unique and powerful data resource that underpins the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey (WAACHS) linked data study. This study aims to provide evidence-based information to Aboriginal communities across Western Australia, governments and non-government agencies on the heterogeneous life trajectories of Aboriginal children and families.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study explores the allocation of time, particularly to sleep, among children and adolescents in response to daily daylight variation. Utilising a dataset of over 50,000 time-use diaries from two Australian cohorts spanning 16 years and employing an individual fixed effects estimator, we uncover a substantial causal impact of daily daylight duration on sleep patterns. Our findings reveal that days with longer daylight hours are associated with a decrease in total sleep duration, primarily driven by a later sleep onset time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Increased use of mobile devices by families can impact parent-child interactions essential for forming secure attachments during infancy, influencing future development outcomes.
- A study of 30 families revealed that while devices can enhance connection through activities like video calls, they can also create distractions that interfere with bonding.
- The findings suggest that device design and usage should prioritize enhancing parent-infant attachment to support child development, emphasizing the need for practitioners to recognize both the positive and negative effects of device use on families.
Article Synopsis
- Unfavourable weather conditions, like extreme temperatures and rain, lead children to decrease their physical activity and spend more time being sedentary, while having minimal effect on their sleep or their parents' activity levels.
- The study uses data from over 1,100 Australian children and their parents, analyzing how weather impacts time spent on physical activities and sleep across different days and varying parental work statuses.
- The findings highlight a significant need for policies aimed at promoting physical activity for children, especially on days with poor weather, since they are more negatively affected than adults.