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ALSPAC – Age 17.5 – Behavioural Inhibition (Probability Learning And Reversal Task)

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 17.5 sweep (TeenFocus 4) using a measure of Behavioural Inhibition (Probability Learning And Reversal Task).

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


Years of data collection:2008-2011
Domain:Memory
Measures:Executive function
CHC:Gsm (Short-term memory)
CLOSER Source:Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Adolescence (13 years – 18 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab)
Administration method:Trained interviewer; clinical setting; computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI)
Procedure:The participant had to learn a 'rule' (i.e. a red and a green grating pattern) that determined which of two abstract stimuli were selected. The rule changed in the middle of the block, and the goal was to see how quickly the participant could adapt to the rule change. All participants completed 40 trials of the initial rule, before the rule was reversed and a further 40 trials were administered.
Link to questionnaire:http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:Number of correct responses per condition
Item-level variable(s):Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s):JPR001, FJPR050, FJPR100, FJPR150, FJPR200, FJPR250, FJPR300, FJPR350, FJPR400, FJPR450, FJPR500, FJPR550, FJPR600, FJPR650

Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC teen Focus 4 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:Number of incorrect responses (Stage 1)Number of incorrect responses (Stage 2)
N = 1,782N = 1,782
Range = 0 - 19Range = 0 - 40
Mean = 4.90Mean = 14.88
SD = 3.11SD = 7.06
(click image to enlarge)
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):Mean = 213.59 months, SD = 5.46, Range = 195 - 240
Other sweep and/or cohort:None
Source:Lawrence, A. D., Sahakian, B. J., Rogers, R. D., Hodges, J. R., & Robbins, T. W. (1999). Discrimination, reversal, and shift learning in Huntington's disease: mechanisms of impaired response selection. Neuropsychologia, 37(12), 1359-1374.
Technical resources:None
Example articles:Lancaster, T. M., Dimitriadis, S. L., Tansey, K. E., Perry, G., Ihssen, N., Jones, D. K., ... & Zammit, S. (2018). Structural and Functional Neuroimaging of Polygenic Risk for Schizophrenia: A Recall-by-Genotype-Based Approach. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 45(2), 405-414.
Ramsay, H., Barnett, J. H., Murray, G. K., Miettunen, J., Mäki, P., Järvelin, M. R., ... & Veijola, J. (2018). Cognition, psychosis risk and metabolic measures in two adolescent birth cohorts. Psychological Medicine, 48(15), 2609-2623.

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’.