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 Attentional Control (Opposite Worlds) 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: | Processing speed | |
| Measures: | Selective attention | |
| Cognitive flexibility | ||
| Processing speed | ||
| Executive functions | ||
| Domain: | Gs (Processing Speed) | |
| Gsm (Short-Term Memory) | ||
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; clinical setting; pen and paper | |
| Procedure: | A form of Stroop task. The child was shown a trail made up of the numbers 1 and 2 (with 24 numbers in total). The tester pointed to each number, one after the other, and the child delivered responses based on two conditions. In the 'same world' (control) condition, they read the numbers out as they are, as quickly as possible. In the 'opposite world' condition, the child was required to say the opposite number to the one that was pointed to. A demonstration of each condition and a practice attempt were administered first. There were four test trials: a same world trial, followed by two opposite world trials and finishing with another same world trial. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab) | |
| Scoring: | Mean time (seconds). | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not readily available. | |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | feat200 -feat229 | |
| Descriptives: | 'Same world' normative score | 'Opposite world' normative score |
| N = 6,799 | N = 6,797 | |
| Range = 1 - 19 | Range = 1 - 19 | |
| Mean = 18.81 | Mean = 18.44 | |
| SD = 0.97 | SD = 1.36 | |
(click image to enlarge) | (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 Attentional Control (Opposite Worlds) | |
| 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: | 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’.