BCS70 – Age 10 – Pictorial Language Comprehension Test (PLCT)

The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 10 sweep using the Pictorial Language Comprehension Test (PLCT).

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

Year of data collection:	1980
Domain:	Verbal
Measures:	Language comprehension, covering vocabulary, sequence and sentence comprehension.
CHC:	Gc (Crystallised ability)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: BCS70 Age 10 Survey (1980) (opens in a new tab)
Administrative method:	In schools, pen and paper
Procedure:	The test consisted of 100 sets of four different pictures with a particular word or sentence associated with each set of four pictures. There were 71 vocabulary items; 16 sentence items and 13 sequence items.
	For the vocabulary and sentence items, the child was asked to indicate the one picture that corresponded to the given word or sentence.
	For the sequence-sentence items, the child was asked to indicate to the pictures in the order that was implied in the sentence.
	For the 71 vocabulary items only, the test increased in difficulty and continued until the child had five successive failures.
	All 39 sentence and sequence-sentence items were administered.
	Duration: 30 minutes
Link to questionnaire:	https://doc.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/3723/mrdoc/pdf/a3723ueb.pdf (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	100 items, consisting of 71 vocabulary items, 16 sentence items and 13 sequence sentence items. One point for each correct answer.
Item-level variable(s):	i8–i62, i66–i81 (vocabulary items)
	i82–i97 (sentence items)
	i98–i110 (sequence-sentence items)
Total score/derived variable(s):	None
Age of participants (months):	Mean = 121.88, SD = 2.67, Range = 117 – 139
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 12,790
	Range = 2 – 100
	Mean = 61.10
	SD = 10.69
	(click image to enlarge)
Other sweep and/or cohort:	BCS70 – Age 5 – English Picture Vocabulary Test (EPVT) (has 56 items)
	NCDS – Child of CM (Multi-Age) – Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Revised (PPVT-R) (US version)
Source:	Based on: English Picture Vocabulary Test (EPVT; Brimmer & Dunn, 1962)
Technical resources:	Parsons, S. (2014). Childhood cognition in the 1970 British Cohort Study, CLS Working Paper. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies. (Link opens in a new tab)
Example articles:	Feinstein, L., & Bynner, J. (2004). The importance of cognitive development in middle childhood for adulthood socioeconomic status, mental health, and problem behavior. Child Development, 75(5), 1329-1339.
	Conti, G., & Heckman, J. J. (2010). Understanding the early origins of the education-health gradient: A framework that can also be applied to analyze gene-environment interactions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(5), 585-605.

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