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ALSPAC – Age 8.5 – WISC-III Picture Arrangement

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 8.5 (Focus@8) sweep using the Picture Arrangement measure from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III).

Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.


Years of data collection:1999-2001
Domain:Non-verbal reasoning
Measures:Sequential reasoning
Planning
Non-verbal reasoning
Social intelligence
Simultaneous processing
CHC:Gc Crystallised intelligence
Gf Fluid intelligence
Gv Visual processing
CLOSER Source:Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Childhood (5 years to 12 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab)
Administration method:Trained interviewer; clinical setting; physical task
Procedure:The child was presented with a set of cartoon images and was asked to arrange them in an order that made a sensible story. A sample item was administered prior to the full trial, which consisted of 14 sequences. Two trials were given for the first two items. For item 1 only, the examiner demonstrated the correct sequence if the child failed to do so.
Link to questionnaire:http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:Items 2 - 4 were worth 2 points each, with bonus points for completion time for items 3 - 14. Raw scores were converted into standardised scores (M = 10, SD = 3) using the WISC manual.
Item-level variable(s):Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s):f8ws028 – f8ws058

Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Focus at 7 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:Raw scoreScaled score
N = 7,308N = 7,309
Range = 0 - 58Range = 1 - 19
Mean = 20.12Mean = 9.41
SD = 10.74SD = 4.77
(click image to enlarge)
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):Mean = 103.82 months, SD = 3.92, Range = 89-127
Other sweep and/or cohort:None
Source:Wechsler, D. (1991). WISC-III: Wechsler intelligence scale for children: Manual. Psychological Corporation.
Technical resources:Kaufman, A. S., & Lichtenberger, E. O. (2000). Essentials of WISC-III and WPPSI-R assessment. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Example articles:Northstone, K., Joinson, C., Emmett, P., Ness, A., & Paus, T. (2012). Are dietary patterns in childhood associated with IQ at 8 years of age? A population-based cohort study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 66(7), 624-628.
Bornstein, M. H., Hahn, C. S., & Wolke, D. (2013). Systems and cascades in cognitive development and academic achievement. Child Development, 84(1), 154-162.

For the named items in the table above, links are provided to their corresponding content on CLOSER Discovery. Where a variable range is provided, full variable lists can be accessed through the ‘Variable Groups’ tab on the linked Discovery page.


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This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.