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NSHD - Age 68-70 - Verbal Learning/Word List Recall Test

The MRC National Survey of Health of Development (NSHD) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 68-70 sweep using the Verbal Learning/Word List Recall Test.

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

In this section

NSHD Age 68-70 Verbal Learning/Word List Recall Test

Years of data collection: 2014-2016
Domain: Verbal (memory)
Measures: Attention
Short-term episodic memory
Verbal memory
Free-recall memory
CHC: Glr (Long-Term Storage and Retrieval)
CLOSER Source: Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: NSHD 2014 (Age 68) and 2015 (Age 69) (links open in a new tab)
Administration method: Research nurse; face to face computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); pen and paper
Procedure: As in sweeps NSHD Age 53 and 60-64 years
Link to questionnaire: https://skylark.ucl.ac.uk/NSHD/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=questionnaires:2015_capi.pdf (opens in new tab)
Scoring: One point was awarded for each correctly remembered word (0 – 45)
Item-level variable(s): WLE115x – WLT315x
Total score/derived variable(s): WLT15x
Descriptives: Raw score
N = 2,074
Range = 0 – 40
Mean = 22.17
SD = 6.07
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months): Mean = 834.14, SD = 2.93, Range = 828 – 848
Other sweep and/or cohort: NCDS – Age 50 – Verbal Learning/Word List Recall Test (Immediate and Delayed (1 trial only; 10 words, presented aurally)
NCDS – Age 62 – Proposed repeat of tests at age 50
BCS70 – Age 46-47 – Verbal Learning/Word List Recall Test (Immediate and Delayed)) (1 trial only; 10 words, presented aurally)
NSHD – Age 43 – Verbal Learning/Word List Recall Test
NSHD – Age 53 – Verbal Learning/Word List Recall Test
NSHD – Age 60-64 – Verbal Learning/Word List Recall Test
Source: This task was developed specifically for this study by the NSHD team. Similar tasks have been used to measure verbal learning for decades, e.g. Bush and Mosteller (1955).
Technical resources: None
Example articles: Proitsi, P., Kuh, D., Wong, A., Maddock, J., Bendayan, R., Wulaningsih, W., … & Richards, M. (2018). Lifetime cognition and late midlife blood metabolites: findings from a British birth cohort. Translational Psychiatry, 8(1), 203.
Tsui, A., Kuh, D., Richards, M., & Davis, D. (2018). Delirium symptoms are associated with decline in cognitive function between ages 53 and 69 years: findings from a British birth cohort study. Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 14(5), 617-622.