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ALSPAC – Age 4 – WPPSI-RUK Comprehension

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) at 49 months’ age (Children in Focus Clinic) using the Comprehension measure from the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence Revised (WPPSI-RUK).

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


DomainVerbal comprehension
Measures:Verbal comprehension
Verbal reasoning
Verbal expression
CHC:Gc (Crystallised intelligence)
Administration method:Trained interviewer; clinical setting; responds orally
Procedure:The child was asked a series of questions based on his or her understanding of general concepts, e.g. "Why do people brush their teeth?", "Why can birds fly, but cats can't?". Interviewers could repeat questions if the child did not understand. Responses were scored on a 0 - 2 metric based on the content of their response. If the child spontaneously improved their answer, this was accepted.
Link to questionnaire:http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:Standardised score (M = 10, SD = 3)
Item-level variable(s):Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s):cf807
Descriptives:Raw score
N = 1,006
Range = 4 - 19
Mean = 10.08
SD = 2.70
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants:Mean = 212.39 weeks, SD = 1.63, Range = 207-221
Other sweep and/or cohort:ALSPAC – Age 8.5 – WISC-III Comprehension
Source:Wechsler, D. (1989). Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised. WPPSI-R. Psychological Corporation.
Technical resources:Kaufman, A. S., & Lichtenberger, E. O. (2000). Essentials of WISC-III and WPPSI-R Assessment. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Reference examples:Gathercole, S. E., Briscoe, J., Thorn, A., Tiffany, C., & ALSPAC Study Team. (2008). Deficits in verbal long-term memory and learning in children with poor phonological short-term memory skills. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61(3), 474-490.
Taylor, C. M., Kordas, K., Golding, J., & Emond, A. M. (2017). Data relating to prenatal lead exposure and child IQ at 4 and 8 years old in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Neurotoxicology, 62, 224-230.

For the named item in the table above, a link is provided to the corresponding CLOSER Discovery content.


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