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 Coding measure from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III).
Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.
| Years of data collection: | 1999-2001 | |
| Domain: | Non-verbal sequencing | |
| Measures: | Visual-motor coordination/speed | |
| Short-term visual memory | ||
| Cognitive flexibility | ||
| Visual sequencing | ||
| Concentration | ||
| CHC: | Gv (Visual Processing) | |
| Gs (Processing Speed) | ||
| 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; pen and paper | |
| Procedure: | The child was shown a key which contained geometric shapes, each of which was marked by a symbol. Next they were presented with rows and columns containing only the geometric shapes, and were tasked with marking each one with the appropriate symbol. Sample items were administered first. | |
| Duration: The actual trial lasted for 120 seconds. | ||
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab) | |
| Scoring: | One point was awarded for each correctly drawn symbol, and these were converted to standardised scores (M = 10, SD = 3) using the WISC manual. | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not readily available | |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | f8ws027 – f8ws057 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Focus at 8 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab) |
|
| Descriptives: | Raw score | Scaled score |
| N = 7,404 | N = 7,403 | |
| Range = 0 - 99 | Range = 1 - 19 | |
| Mean = 34.52 | Mean = 10.49 | |
| SD = 7.45 | SD = 3.04 | |
(click image to enlarge) | (click image to enlarge) |
|
| Age of participants (months): | Mean = 103.82 months, SD = 3.92, Range = 89 - 127 | |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | None | |
| Source: | Wechsler, D. (1991). WISC-III: Wechsler intelligence scale for children: Manual. Psychological Corporation. | |
| Technical resources: | Kaufman, A. S., & Lichtenberger, E. O. (2000). Essentials of WISC-III and WPPSI-R assessment. John Wiley & Sons Inc. | |
| Example articles: | Horwood, J., Salvi, G., Thomas, K., Duffy, L., Gunnell, D., Hollis, C., ... & Zammit, S. (2008). IQ and non-clinical psychotic symptoms in 12-year-olds: results from the ALSPAC birth cohort. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 193(3), 185-191. | |
| Bornstein, M. H., Hahn, C. S., & Wolke, D. (2013). Systems and cascades in cognitive development and academic achievement. Child Development, 84(1), 154-162. | ||
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.
Go to:
- Overview of all cognitive measures in ALSPAC
- Overview of childhood cognitive measures across all studies
This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.