ALSPAC – Age 17.5 – Information Processing Biases (Affective Go/No-Go Task)

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 17.5 sweep (TeenFocus 4) using a measure of Information Processing Biases (Affective Go/No-Go Task).

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

Years of data collection:	2008-2011
Domain:	Information processing biases for positive and negative stimuli
Measures:	Executive control of positive and negative information
CHC:	None
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:	This test required participants to differentiate between happy and sad words. Eight blocks of 18 words pertaining to emotions were presented. Single words appeared on the computer screen, and participants were instructed to hit the spacebar when a happy word appeared (e.g. hopeful, serene). After two word blocks requiring responses to happy words, the instructions changed so that the space bar was to be pressed for sad words. Instructions were alternated in this fashion until all eight blocks were administered. Words were presented for 300 msec, with a 900 msec interval between each word.
Link to questionnaire:	http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	Mean RTs (reaction times) for hits (i.e., pressing the space bar in the presence of a target word), collapsed across valence and shift condition.
Item-level variable(s):	Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s):	FJGO001 – FJGO1850 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC teen Focus 4 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 2,485
	Range = 155.38 – 764.07
	Mean = 517.38
	SD = 66.94
	(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):	Mean = 213.59 months, SD = 5.46, Range = 195 – 240
Other sweep and/or cohort:	None
Source:	Murphy, F. C., Sahakian, B. J., Rubinsztein, J. S., Michael, A., Rogers, R. D., Robbins, T. W., & Paykel, E. S. (1999). Emotional bias and inhibitory control processes in mania and depression. Psychological Medicine, 29(6), 1307-1321.
Technical resources:	None
Example articles:	Unknown

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.