Large-scale assessment of 7-11-year-olds' cognitive and sensorimotor function within the Born in Bradford longitudinal birth cohort study.

Liam Jb Hill,Amanda H Waterman,Megan L Wood,Richard J Allen,Kirsty Crossley,Dan Mason,Katy A Shire

doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16429.2

Liam Jb Hill, Amanda H Waterman + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16429.2

Copy DOI

Abstract

Background:Cognitive ability and sensorimotor function are crucial aspects of children's development, and are associated with physical and mental health outcomes and educational attainment. This paper describes cross-sectional sensorimotor and cognitive function data collected on over 15,000 children aged 7-10 years, collected as part of the Born in Bradford (BiB) longitudinal birth-cohort study. Methodological details of the large-scale data collection process are described, along with initial analyses of the data involving the relationship between cognition/sensorimotor ability and age and task difficulty, and associations between tasks. Method: Data collection was completed in 86 schools between May 2016 and July 2019. Children were tested at school, individually, using a tablet computer with a digital stylus or finger touch for input. Assessments comprised a battery of three sensorimotor tasks (Tracking, Aiming, & Steering) and five cognitive tasks (three Working Memory tasks, Inhibition, and Processing Speed), which took approximately 40 minutes. Results: Performance improved with increasing age and decreasing task difficulty, for each task. Performance on all three sensorimotor tasks was correlated, as was performance on the three working memory tasks. In addition, performance on a composite working memory score correlated with performance on both inhibition and processing speed. Interestingly, within age-group variation was much larger than between age-group variation. Conclusions: The current project collected computerised measures of a range of cognitive and sensorimotor functions at 7-10 years of age in over 15,000 children. Performance varied as expected by age and task difficulty, and showed the predicted correlations between related tasks. Large within-age group variation highlights the need to consider the profile of individual children in studying cognitive and sensorimotor development. These data can be linked to the wider BiB dataset including measures of physical and mental health, biomarkers and genome-wide data, socio-demographic information, and routine data from local health and education services.

Highlights

Cognitive ability and sensorimotor function are crucial aspects of children’s development, and are associated with physical and mental health outcomes and educational attainment
In collecting data on the sensorimotor and cognitive performance from over 6,200 children participating in the Born in Bradford cohort, and a further 9,500 of their classmates, the Growing Up in Bradford project has succeeded in obtaining objective measures of these important aspects of cognitive and motoric functioning at a critical stage in children’s development
This initial paper established the methodological details of this data collection and illustrated that performance on all the assessments showed the changes one would expect in response to age and task difficulty

Summary

Introduction

Cognitive ability and sensorimotor function are crucial aspects of children’s development, and are associated with physical and mental health outcomes and educational attainment. This paper describes cross-sectional sensorimotor and cognitive function data collected on over 15,000 children aged 7-10 years, collected as part of the Born in Bradford (BiB) longitudinal birth-cohort study. Methodological details of the large-scale data collection process are described, along with initial analyses of the data involving the relationship between cognition/sensorimotor ability and age and task difficulty, and associations between tasks. Assessments comprised a battery of three sensorimotor tasks (Tracking, Aiming, & Steering) and five cognitive tasks (three Working Memory tasks, Inhibition, and Processing Speed), which took approximately 40 minutes. Performance on all three sensorimotor tasks was correlated, as was performance on the three working memory tasks. Performance on a composite working memory score correlated with performance on both inhibition and processing speed. Conclusions: The current project collected computerised measures of a range of cognitive and sensorimotor functions at 7-10 years of age version 2

Methods

Results

Conclusion