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.
| 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) | ||
| 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 | |
| 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: | 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. | |
| Reference examples: | 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.
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’.