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NSHD – Age 68-70 – ACE-III Language Test

The MRC National Survey of Health of Development (NSHD) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 68-70 sweep using the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-III (ACE-III): Language Test.

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


Years of data collection:2014-2016
Domain:Verbal (language ability)
Measures:Language comprehension
Lexical knowledge
CHC:Gc (Crystallized Intelligence)
CLOSER Source:Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: NSHD 2014 (Age 68) and 2015 (Age 69) (links open in a new tab)
Administration method:Administered by a research nurse. Mostly conducted using ACEmobile app, installed on an iPad, with prompts to guide interviewer through the process. Pen and paper used where necessary (e.g. drawing tests).
Procedure:First, participants were handed a pencil and paper and asked to follow three commands:
(i) "Place the paper on top of the pencil”,
(ii) “Pick up the pencil but not the paper”,
(iii) "Ask the subject to “Pass me the pencil after touching the paper” (0 - 3)
Second, they are asked to write two complete sentences about their last holiday/weekend/Christmas (0 - 2)
Third, they were asked to repeat the words: 'caterpillar’; ‘eccentricity; ‘unintelligible’; ‘statistician’ (0 - 2)
Fourth, they were asked to repeat the saying ‘All that glitters is not gold’ (0 - 1)
Fifth, they were asked to repeat the saying ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ (0 - 1)
Sixth, they were shown 12 pictures and asked to name them (0 - 12)
Seventh, they were asked to point to certain pictures, e.g. “Which picture relates to the monarchy” (0 - 4)
Finally, they were asked to read aloud 5 irregular words, e.g. ‘sew’, ‘pint’ (0 - 1)
Link to questionnaire:https://skylark.ucl.ac.uk/NSHD/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=mrepo:ace-iii.pdf (opens in new tab)
Scoring:One or two points per correct answer (0 - 26)
Item-level variable(s):Not currently available
Total score/derived variable(s):ACELANGTOT15x
Descriptives:Raw score
N = 1,765
Range = 16 - 26
Mean = 25.27
SD = 1.17
(click image to enlarge)

Age of participants (months):Mean = 834.14, SD = 2.93, Range = 828 - 848
Other sweep and/or cohort:None
Source:Mathuranath, P. S., Nestor, P. J., Berrios, G. E., Rakowicz, W., & Hodges, J. R. (2000). A brief cognitive test battery to differentiate Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Neurology, 55(11), 1613-1620.
Technical resources:Noone, P. (2015). Addenbrooke's cognitive examination-III. Occupational Medicine, 65(5), 418-420.
Example articles:Matías-Guiu, J. A., Valles-Salgado, M., Rognoni, T., Hamre-Gil, F., Moreno-Ramos, T., & Matías-Guiu, J. (2017). Comparative diagnostic accuracy of the ACE-III, MIS, MMSE, MoCA, and RUDAS for screening of Alzheimer Disease. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 43(5-6), 237-246.
James, S. N., Davis, D., O'Hare, C., Sharma, N., John, A., Gaysina, D., ... & Richards, M. (2018). Lifetime affective problems and later-life cognitive state: Over 50 years of follow-up in a British birth cohort study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 241, 348-355.

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