ALSPAC - Age 8.5 - Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III) Block Design

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 8.5 (Focus@8) sweep using the Block Design measure from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III).

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

Years of data collection:	1999-2001
Domain:	Non-verbal ability
Measures:	Planning
	Spatial visualisation
	Visual motor coordination
	Simultaneous processing
	Synthesis (part-whole relationships)
	Non-verbal concept formation
CHC:	Gs (Processing Speed)
	Gv (Visual Processing)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Childhood (5 years to 12 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab)
Administration method:	Trained interviewer; clinical setting; physical task
Procedure:	The child was presented with an image or model that depicted a pattern, and was tasked with recreating the pattern with one- and two-colour blocks (white and red). The test contained 14 designs, and the child was allowed two attempts at each design. Points were awarded for completion, and bonus points were awarded based on time
Link to questionnaire:	http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	Raw scores were converted into scale scores using tables provided in the WISC manual (M = 10, SD = 3).
Item-level variable(s):	Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s):	f8ws029 – f8ws059 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Focus at 8 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:	Raw score	Scaled score
	N = 7,324	N = 7,362
	Range = 0 – 68	Range = 1 – 19
	Mean = 32.19	Mean = 10.53
	SD = 12.50	SD = 3.81
	(click image to enlarge)	(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):	Mean = 103.82 months, SD = 3.92, Range = 89 – 127
Other sweep and/or cohort:	ALSPAC – Age 4 – WPPSI-RUK Block Design
	MCS – Age 5 – BAS II Pattern Construction
	MCS – Age 7 – BAS II Pattern Construction
Source:	Wechsler, D. (1991). WISC-III: Wechsler intelligence scale for children: Manual. Psychological Corporation.
Technical resources:	Kaufman, A. S., & Lichtenberger, E. O. (2000). Essentials of WISC-III and WPPSI-R assessment. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Example articles:	Northstone, K., Joinson, C., Emmett, P., Ness, A., & Paus, T. (2012). Are dietary patterns in childhood associated with IQ at 8 years of age? A population-based cohort study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 66(7), 624-628.
	Bornstein, M. H., Hahn, C. S., & Wolke, D. (2013). Systems and cascades in cognitive development and academic achievement. Child Development, 84(1), 154-162.

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.