ALSPAC - Age 24 - N-Back Task (working memory)
The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 24 sweep (Focus at 24) using a measure of N-Back Task (working memory) .
Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.
| Year of data collection: | 2015-2017 |
| Domain: | Non-verbal memory |
| Measures: | Working memory |
| Executive function | |
| CHC: | Gsm (Short-Term Memory) |
| CLOSER Source: | Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Early Adulthood (19 years – 30 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab) |
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; clinical setting; computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) |
| Procedure: | This task was the third element of the Eprime cognitive testing session. In the task, participants were presented with a sequence of stimuli one-by-one. They had to decide whether the current stimulus was the same as the one presented N trials ago. In this case, N was 2 trials. The higher the number, the more difficult the task. Visuospatial stimuli (letters and numbers) were used in the trials. |
| In each trial, participants could either provide a correct response, give a false alarm (i.e. erroneously report that the stimulus appeared N trials ago), or not respond (i.e. fail to report that the stimulus appeared N trials ago). In 8 of the 48 trials, the stimulus had appeared N trials ago; if the participant correctly reported this, their response was scored as a hit, and if they failed to report it, their answer was scored as a miss. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in a new tab) |
| Scoring: | Mean accuracy and median reaction time. |
| Item-level variable(s): | FKEP2010 (correct responses) |
| FKEP2020 (false alarms) | |
| FKEP2030 (hits) | |
| FKEP2040 (missed) | |
| FKEP2050 (no response) | |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | FKEP2010 (number of correct responses) |
| Descriptives: | FKEP2010 (no. of correct responses): |
| N = 3,557 | |
| Range = 0 – 40 | |
| Mean = 36.68 | |
| SD = 5.777 | |
| Age of participants (months): | Mean = 293.81 months, SD = 9.779, Range = 268.5 – 318.5 |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | ALSPAC – Age 17.5 – Working memory (N-Back task) |
| Source: | Kirchner, W. K. (1958). Age differences in short-term retention of rapidly changing information. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55(4), 352. |
| Technical resources: | None |
| Example articles: | Wardle, M. C., De Wit, H., Penton-Voak, I., Lewis, G., & Munafo, M. R. (2013). Lack of association between COMT and working memory in a population-based cohort of healthy young adults. Neuropsychopharmacology, 38(7), 1253. |
| Sinclair, L. I., Button, K. S., Munafò, M. R., Day, I. N., & Lewis, G. (2015). Possible association of APOE genotype with working memory in young adults. PloS one, 10(8), e0135894. |
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 CLOSER Discovery page.