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ALSPAC – Age 25 months – The Reynell Development Language Scale: Verbal Comprehensions Subscale

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) sweep at 25 months’ age (Children in Focus Clinic) using the Reynell Development Language Scale’s Verbal Comprehensions Subscale.

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

 

In this section

ALSPAC Age 25 months Reynell Development Language Scale: Verbal Comprehensions Subscale

Years of data collection: 1994-1995
Domain: Language ability
Measures: Language development
Verbal/lexical comprehension
Listening ability
CHC: Gc (Crystallized Intelligence)
CLOSER Source: Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Early Years (13 months to 4 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab)
Administration method: Trained interviewer; clinical setting; guided play session
Procedure: During a guided play session, the child was presented with a set of toys and asked to carry out a series of tasks of increasing complexity. First, the child was asked to select a specific toy (e.g. “Where is the horse?”). Next the child was asked to manipulate the toy in increasingly complex ways in order to demonstrate understanding, e.g. “Put the spoon in the cup”, “Put the white button underneath the cup”.
Link to questionnaire: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring: Raw (0 – 55) and standardised (-11 – 3) scores are available, with the standardised score reflecting how well the children performed in comparison with other children at age 2 years (mean = 0, SD = +/- 1).
Item-level variable(s): Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s): cf421 – cf424

Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Children in Focus 4Mth-61Mth Clinics Dataset (opens in a new tab)

Descriptives: Raw score Standardised score
N = 1,109 N = 1,085
Range = 0 – 51 Range = -3 – 3.1
Mean = 23.90 Mean = 0.69
SD = 8.44 SD = 1.17
(click image to enlarge)
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (weeks): Mean = 108.24 weeks, SD = 0.98, Range = 106 – 115
Other sweep and/or cohort: ALSPAC – Age 5 – The Reynell Developmental Language Scale: Verbal Comprehensions Subscale
Source: Reynell, J., & Curwen, M. P. (1977). Manual for the Reynell developmental language scales (revised). NFER.
Technical resources: Reynell, J. K., & Gruber, C. P. (1997). Reynell developmental language scales. Western Psychological Services.
Example articles: Roulstone, S., Loader, S., Northstone, K., & Beveridge, M. (2002). The speech and language of children aged 25 months: Descriptive data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Early Child Development and Care, 172(3), 259-268.
Clegg, J., Law, J., Rush, R., Peters, T. J., & Roulstone, S. (2015). The contribution of early language development to children’s emotional and behavioural functioning at 6 years: an analysis of data from the Children in Focus sample from the ALSPAC birth cohort. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 56(1), 67-75.

For the named items on the table above, links are provided (where applicable) 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.