ALSPAC – Age 13.5 – Reaction Time (Simple Choice Digit Vigilance)

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 13 sweep (TeenFocus 2) using a measure of Reaction Time (Simple Choice Digit Vigilance).

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

Years of data collection:	2005-2006
Domain:	Reaction time
Measures:	Alertness
	Concentration
	Simple reaction time
	Choice reaction time
	Mental Comparison Speed
CHC:	Gt (Decision speed/reaction time)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Adolescence (13 years – 18 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab)
Administration method:	Trained interviewer; clinical setting; computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI)
Procedure:	Reaction time was measured using three different tasks:
	i. Simple reaction time: Using the CAPI, the child was presented with the word “YES” in the middle of the screen, at irregular intervals. They were instructed to press the left arrow key as soon as they saw the word “YES” appear.
	ii. Choice Reaction time: Same as above but with the addition of the word “NO”. Participant is instructed to press the left arrow key when “YES” appears, and the right arrow key when “NO” appears.
	iii. Digit Vigilance: A single number is presented on the right hand side of the screen, and a series of changing numbers appear in the centre. When the number in the centre matches the number on the right, the participant must press the left arrow key as quickly as possible.
Link to questionnaire:	http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	Speed (median) and errors are recorded
Item-level variable(s):	None
Total score/derived variable(s):	fg5600 – fg5681 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Teen Focus 2 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:	Simple reaction time (median)	Choice reaction time (median)
	N = 5,477	N = 5,454
	Range = 204 – 1663	Range = 259 – 907
	Mean = 285.26	Mean = 440.30
	SD = 51.49	SD = 63.02
	(click image to enlarge)	(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):	Mean (months) = 166.02, SD = 2.49, Range = 150 – 182
Other sweep and/or cohort:	None
Source:	Standard reaction time tasks designed for study
Technical resources:	None
Example articles:	Booth, J. N., Tomporowski, P. D., Boyle, J. M., Ness, A. R., Joinson, C., Leary, S. D., & Reilly, J. J. (2013). Associations between executive attention and objectively measured physical activity in adolescence: findings from ALSPAC, a UK cohort. Mental Health and Physical Activity, 6(3), 212-219.

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.