Cognitive measures in the 1970 British Cohort Study

Click on the individual cognitive measures in the table below to find out more.

Note that at age 22 and 42 months, due to medical concerns about the effect of fetal malnutrition in brain cell proliferation, a sub-sample of BCS children were studied. A 10% random sample of all births was included together with those children who were considered to be at risk from fetal malnutrition.

At age 34, child assessments were conducted with the cohort member’s children. Each of the cohort member’s eligible children were asked to complete three exercises designed to measure a range of verbal and numerical abilities. Although dependent on the child’s age and abilities, each set of exercises was expected to take an average of 20 minutes to complete.

Age	Measure
22 months ( Tests administered to a randomly selected sub-sample.)	Developmental Milestones (incl. fine locomotor test, speech and language, etc.)
42 months ( Tests administered to a randomly selected sub-sample.)	Developmental Milestones
5 years	Schonell Reading Test English Picture Vocabulary Test Copying Designs Test Human Figure Drawing Complete a Profile Test
10 years	Edinburgh Reading Test (Shortened Version) Friendly Maths Test Pictorial Language Comprehension Test Spelling Dictation Task British Ability Scales (BAS) Word Similarities Word Definitions Recall of Digits Matrices
16 years	Edinburgh Reading Test (Shortened Version) Spelling Test Applied Psychology Unit (APU) Arithmetic Test Vocabulary Test British Ability Scales (BAS) Matrices
21 years (Tests completed by a sub-sample.)	Literacy and Numeracy Assessments (ALBSU devised)
34 years	Basic Skills (Literacy and Numeracy Assessments) Literacy and Numeracy Skills
42 years	Applied Psychology Unit (APU) Vocabulary Test
46-47 years	Verbal Learning/ Word List Recall Test (Immediate and Delayed) Timed Letter Search/Letter Cancellation Test Verbal Fluency (Animal Naming) Test
50 years (At the time of writing, cognitive tests were provisional pending pilot and fieldwork.)	Proposed repeat of some (and other) adult tests within and across cohort(s)
Multi-age (Tests completed by the children of cohort members when the cohort member was aged 34 years.)	Age 3-5 years 11 months: British Ability Scales (BAS) Naming Vocabulary Early Number Concepts Copying Designs Test (same as used with BCS70 cohort members) Age 6-16 years 11 months: BAS Word Reading Number Skills Spelling

Explore the cognitive measures in other studies covered by this guide:

Explore the cognitive measures across studies by life stage:

Further information:

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