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ALSPAC – Age 4 – WPPSI-RUK Information

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) at 49 months’ age (Children in Focus Clinic) using the Information 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.


Domain:Verbal ability
Measures:General verbal information
Verbal comprehension
Listening ability
Auditory/visual perception
Oral production and fluency
CHC:Gc (Crystallised intelligence)
Administration method:Trained interviewer; clinical setting; child points to answer, answers orally
Procedure:This test consisted of two parts. For the first part of the test, the child was presented with 6 sets of four images. For each set of images, the child was asked to point to a particular image (e.g. "can you point to the duck"). If the child did not point to the correct picture for the first item, the interviewer demonstrated. The second part of the test consisted of verbal items, in which the child was asked general knowledge questions, e.g. "show me your foot".
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):cf806
Descriptives:Raw score
N = 1,021
Range = 2 - 18
Mean = 10.68
SD = 3.03
(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 Information
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’.