International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | Interview with the Authors—Ms. Laurie-Anne Kosak and Prof. Linda Pagani
Name: Ms. Laurie-Anne Kosak
Affiliation: 1 School of Psycho-Education, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC H2V 2S9, Canada; 2 School Environment Research Group, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC H3C 3J7, Canada
Name: Prof. Linda Pagani
Affiliation: 1 School of Psycho-Education, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC H2V 2S9, Canada; 2 School Environment Research Group, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC H3C 3J7, Canada; 3 Sainte-Justine’s Hospital Research Center, Montreal, QC H3T 1C5, Canada
“Early Socio-Emotional Difficulty as a Childhood Barrier to the Expected Benefits of Active Play: Associated Risks for School Engagement in Adolescence”
by Laurie-Anne Kosak, Kianoush Harandian, Simon L. Bacon, Isabelle Archambault, Luca Correale and Linda S. Pagani
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2024, 21(10), 1353; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21101353
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/10/1353
The following is an interview with Ms. Laurie-Anne Kosak and Prof. Linda Pagani:
1. Congratulations on your recently published paper! Could you please give our readers a brief introduction to yourself and your current research topic?
Linda S. Pagani: My name is Linda Pagani, and I’m a professor at the University of Montreal. In my lab, we focus on studying lifestyle factors and their impacts on development. I’ve been fortunate to work with Laurie-Anne Kosak, an outstanding student who undertook a significant project as part of her studies. She used a historically important population-based longitudinal study for her research. Why do I call it historically important? Because it was conducted during a time when technology wasn’t as invasive as it is today. This allowed us to work with fewer nuisance variables, offering more controlled results compared to what you might encounter in today’s hyper-connected environment. We received funding for this work from Sport Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Laurie-Anne, who is also a scholarship awardee of this council, has conducted remarkable research. I want to highlight that it’s important for senior researchers like myself to give young scientists opportunities to take on responsibility early in their careers. With the right support, they can achieve significant milestones, as Laurie-Anne has.
Laurie-Anne Kosak: My name is Laurie-Anne Kosak, and I recently graduated from the University of Montreal with a master’s degree under Linda’s direction. The paper we’re discussing today was one of two I worked on during my master’s studies. In this particular research, we examined the connection between early childhood active play and school engagement. Another paper from this series, published in Children, focused on the link between extracurricular physical activity and academic achievement. Both papers were part of my master’s research, which, as Linda mentioned, was funded by the SSHRC. Currently, I’m starting my Ph.D. at the University of Sherbrooke, Canada. My research interest lies in exploring how lifestyle factors like physical activity can influence various aspects of child development. Physical activity is particularly fascinating because it’s actionable—it’s something families can easily incorporate into their daily lives, making it a critical area of study.
2. What aspect of your work excites you most right now? Have you encountered any unexpected findings during your research journey?
Laurie-Anne Kosak: What excites me most is how close this research is to everyday life. Studying lifestyle factors like physical activity makes it easy to connect with people and helps them make tangible changes. As for unexpected findings, we discovered that while physical activity generally benefits children, certain individual characteristics can influence these outcomes. For instance, children with traits like anxiety, or relational aggression may not experience the same benefits as others. Another finding was the significant impact of organized sports compared to unstructured activities like free play or cycling. Organized sports, which involve structure and guidance from coaches or instructors, seem to offer additional benefits, such as teaching teamwork, discipline, and attention. However, access to these activities can depend on family characteristics like socioeconomic status, parental education, and income.
Linda S. Pagani: Structure is essential, and this ties into another aspect of our research: the importance of respecting the differences between males and females in how they experience risk and protective factors. Many studies take a gender-neutral approach, but real life isn’t gender-neutral. Social expectations and biological influences mean that males and females experience these factors differently. In our lab, we stratify our analyses by sex to ensure that these nuances are respected and accurately reflected in our findings.
Laurie-Anne Kosak: Yes, and our findings reinforce this approach. For instance, boys and girls may benefit differently from certain types of physical activity or interventions, which highlights the need for tailored strategies in promoting healthy lifestyles for children.
3. Let’s dive deeper into how your collaboration came together for this research. How did your team form, and what was the dynamic like?
Laurie-Anne Kosak: This project brought together researchers from three universities. I conducted my master’s work at the University of Montreal under Linda’s supervision. We were also supported by Kianoush Harandian, another student in the School Environment Research Group, which studies school adaptation and environmental influences on children, as well as Isabelle Archambault who is a professor of psychoeducation at the University of Montreal and also a member of the School Environment Research Group. Additionally, Simon Bacon from Concordia University, who specializes in physical activity research, and Luca Correale from the University of Pavia in Italy, contributed to the paper. Their expertise allowed us to refine our findings and push the research further after I graduated.
4. What do you hope readers will take away from your paper?
Laurie-Anne Kosak: As Linda mentioned earlier, we conducted sex-stratified analyses and found notable differences between boys and girls. For girls, when they had low anxiety, their school engagement was more positively influenced by participation in sports. Interestingly, when girls had higher levels of anxiety and participated in organized sports, their school engagement was lower. Our interpretation is that, at six years old, the age when we measured active play and anxiety, organized sports might overwhelm children already experiencing high anxiety. Combining that with starting school might simply be too much for them at such a young age, leading to lower long-term school engagement.
Linda Pagani: Organized sports could act as a risk factor for girls with high anxiety. At this age, they’re already receiving strong messages about the importance of excelling both academically and in extracurricular activities. Women’s stronger connections between the frontal lobe and amygdala may also contribute to this heightened emotional response, possibly due to evolutionary roles in offspring protection.
Laurie-Anne Kosak: For boys, a similar pattern emerged but with unstructured physical activity, like playing outside or street hockey. When boys with low anxiety participated in these activities, it had little impact on their school engagement. However, for boys with high anxiety, engaging in more unstructured physical activity correlated with lower school engagement. Physical activity in this case appeared to act as a distraction, shifting their focus away from school.
Linda Pagani: This is unstructured play—completely different from organized sports. For boys with high anxiety, these activities can be overly stimulating and pleasurable, leading them to disengage from school. Developmentally, boys may also struggle more with self-regulation at this age.
Laurie-Anne Kosak: For boys with higher levels of relational aggression—behaviors like exclusion or verbal negativity toward peers—unstructured physical activity was again linked to lower school engagement. However, we didn’t find significant results for relational aggression in girls.
5. What inspired you to submit this work to our journal, and how was your experience?
Laurie-Anne Kosak: I was drawn to the journal’s interdisciplinary focus. I appreciate its ability to bring together perspectives from various fields on related topics. The submission process was smooth and user-friendly, which I found refreshing.
Linda Pagani: I also value the journal’s broad readership, particularly in Europe, where I collaborate extensively. It’s an excellent platform for sharing research with a diverse audience. For example, I recently gave a talk in Moscow on the fragile state of youth today. Topics like this benefit greatly from the journal’s reach and interdisciplinary approach.
We would like to express our gratitude to Ms. Laurie-Anne Kosak, Prof. Linda Pagani, and their research group for choosing the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: ISSN: 1660-4601) as the platform to publish their research. Submissions and inputs related to the area of health promotion and health presentation are welcomed by our journal.