The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 11.5 sweep (Focus 11+ Clinic) using the Sky Search measure from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch).
Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.
| Domain: | Attention |
| Measures: | Selective attention |
| Concentration | |
| Mental speed | |
| Visual scanning | |
| CHC: | Gs (Processing Speed) |
| Gps (Psychomotor Speed) | |
| Gv (Visual Processing) | |
| Gsm (Short-Term Memory) | |
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; clinical setting; pen and paper |
| Procedure: | The child was presented with an array of non-identical and identical spaceships, and was tasked with circling pairs of identical spaceships as quickly as possible, whilst trying to avoid any errors. The interviewer demonstrated, and the child worked through a practice sheet. After the practice sheet, the child was presented with larger sheet and asked to do the same (20 identical pairs). The amount of time taken was recorded in seconds. |
| The above task was repeated, without the non-identical pairs of ships. The aim was to identify how quickly the child could complete the task, in order to control for motor performance. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab) |
| Scoring: | Three summary scores are provided: |
| i. unadjusted score: time taken (in seconds) for the search task divided by the number of spaceship pairs correctly circled | |
| ii. motor score: time in seconds for the motor task divided by number of correct pairs | |
| iii. The adjusted score is calculated by subtracting the motor score from the unadjusted score, thus controlling for motor speed | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not readily available. |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | feat025 - feat065 |
| Descriptives: | Raw score |
| N = 7,119 | |
| Range = 1-17 | |
| Mean = 9.11 | |
| SD = 2.42 | |
(click image to enlarge) |
|
| Age of participants: | Mean (months) = 140.97, SD = 2.86, Range = 125 - 163 |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | ALSPAC – Age 8.5 – TEA-Ch Selective Attention and Motor Control Sky Search |
| Source: | Robertson, I. H., Ward, T., Ridgeway, V., & Nimmo-Smith, I. (1996). The structure of normal human attention: The Test of Everyday Attention. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 2(6), 525-534. |
| Manly, T., Anderson, V., Nimmo-Smith, I., Turner, A., Watson, P., & Robertson, I. H. (2001). The differential assessment of children's attention: The Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch), normative sample and ADHD performance. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 42(8), 1065-1081. | |
| Technical resources: | Heaton, S. C., Reader, S. K., Preston, A. S., Fennell, E. B., Puyana, O. E., Gill, N., & Johnson, J. H. (2001). The Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch): Patterns of performance in children with ADHD and clinical controls. Child Neuropsychology, 7(4), 251-264. |
| Reference examples: | Odd, D. E., Emond, A., & Whitelaw, A. (2012). Long-term cognitive outcomes of infants born moderately and late preterm. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 54(8), 704-709. |
| Booth, J. N., Tomporowski, P. D., Boyle, J. M., Ness, A. R., Joinson, C., Leary, S. D., & Reilly, J. J. (2013). Associations between executive attention and objectively measured physical activity in adolescence: findings from ALSPAC, a UK cohort. Mental Health and Physical Activity, 6(3), 212-219. |
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.
Go to:
- Overview of all cognitive measures in ALSPAC
- Overview of childhood cognitive measures across all studies
This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.