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ALSPAC – Focus on Mothers 3 – Logic Memory (Immediate And Delayed)

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed study mothers during the study’s third ‘Focus on Mothers’ clinic using a measure of Logic Memory (Immediate And Delayed).

The study of ALSPAC study mothers began in 2008 with the aim of determining what factors are related to body size, bone density, blood pressure, glucose, insulin and abnormal blood lipids in women. This ‘Focus on Mothers’ (FOM) study consisted of four clinics held during the following periods: i) 2008 – 2011, ii) 2011 – 2013, iii) 2013 – 2014, and iv) 2014 – 2015. Each clinic lasted approximately 2.5 hours. For further details see Fraser et al. (2012). Along with various physical measures, measures of cognitive ability/functioning were collected at clinics FOM2, FOM3, and FOM4.

Details on the Logic Memory (Immediate And Delayed) measure administered as part of FOM3 are outlined in the table below.


Domain:Verbal memory
Measures:Attention
Short-term episodic memory
Verbal memory
CHC:Glr (long-term storage and retrieval)
Administration method:Trained interviewer; face to face; clinical setting
Procedure:Participants were played an audio recording of a short story, and were asked to recount the story, using as close to the original wording as possible. They were given one minute to recount as much information as they could remember, with occasional prompts of encouragement (e.g. 'Anything else?') from the tester. After completing all other cognitive assessments, participants were again asked to recall the story from the beginning of the session.
Link to questionnaire:http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:One point for each correct item at each line
Item-level variable(s):Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s):fm3cg010, fm3cg015
Descriptives:Immediate recallDelayed recall
N = 2,985N = 2,985
Range = 2 - 25Range = 0 - 24
Mean = 15.95Mean = 14.94
SD = 3.29SD = 3.53
(click image to enlarge)
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (years):Mean = 52.00, SD = 4.45, Range = 38 - 67
Other sweep and/or cohort:ALSPAC – Focus on Mothers 2 – Logic Memory (Immediate And Delayed)
ALSPAC – Focus on Mothers 4 – Logic Memory (Immediate And Delayed)
Source:Wechsler, D. (1998).Wechsler Memory Scale: Administration and scoring manual. London, UK: The Psychological Corporation.
Technical resources:None
Reference examples:Anderson, E. L., Heron, J., Ben-Shlomo, Y., Kuh, D., Cooper, R., Lawlor, D. A., ... & Howe, L. D. (2017). Adversity in childhood and measures of aging in midlife: Findings from a cohort of British women. Psychology and Aging, 32(6), 521-530.

For the named items in the table above, links are provided to their corresponding content on CLOSER Discovery.


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