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ALSPAC – Age 8.5 – Articulatory Skills

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 8.5 sweep (Focus@8) using the Articulatory Skills measure.

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


Years of data collection:1999-2001
Domain:Verbal (articulation)
Measures:Diadochokinetic (DDK) rates
CHC:Ga (Auditory 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; oral answers
Procedure:This test involves the rapid repetition of sounds (syllables) within a given timeframe. The tester demonstrated by repeating a sound, syllable or series of syllables as quickly as possible for a short time. The child was then asked to repeat a series of sounds over a period of at least 10 seconds.
Link to questionnaire:http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:Number of correct repetitions within the time frame. Errors also recorded.
Item-level variable(s):f8sl120-f8sl170
Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Focus at 8 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Total score/derived variable(s):None
Descriptives:NA (for frequencies, see ALSPAC documentation)
Age of participants (months):Mean = 103.82 months, SD = 3.92, Range = 89 - 127
Other sweep and/or cohort:None
Source:Task designed specifically for study
Technical resources:None
Example articles:Sullivan, S., Rai, D., Golding, J., Zammit, S., & Steer, C. (2013). The association between autism spectrum disorder and psychotic experiences in the Avon longitudinal study of parents and children (ALSPAC) birth cohort. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 52(8), 806-814.

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’.