DementiaBank English WLS Corpus

Carol Roan Center for Demography and Ecology University of Wisconsin-Madison roan@ssc.wisc.edu

Browsable transcripts

Download transcripts

Media folder

Citation information

Herd, P., Carr, D., & Roan, C. (2014). Cohort profile: Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS). International Journal of Epidemiology 43, 34-41.

In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one corpus reference.

Project Description

The WLS is a large-scale, long-term, longitudinal study of a random sample of men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. Data on these participants were collected five more times through 2011. The data here are a small subset of tasks from the 2004 (sometimes labeled as 2003) and 2011 testing that are relevant to the other language tasks used in DementiaBank corpora. The large majority of these participants would be considered healthy controls.

Media and Transcript Database contents:

The WLS media folder contains the following folders and subfolders:

1. 00-19
• Each folder contains audio files of cookie theft picture descriptions from 2011 testing
• Folders are organized in groups based on participant ID numbers
• Example: folder 00 contains participant ID numbers 00007, 00032; folder 12 contains ID numbers 12003, 12011.
2. 0extra
   • 2003del.zip -- audio files for delayed word recall from 2003/2004 testing
   • 2003flu_sim -- audio files and Excel spreadsheets (with responses) for category and letter fluency tasks and similarities task from 2003/2004 testing
   • 2003imm.zip -- audio files for immediate word recall from 2003/2004 testing
   • 2011del.zip -- audio files for delayed word recall from 2011 testing
   • 2011flu -- audio files and Excel spreadsheets (with responses) for category and letter fluency tasks from 2011 testing
   • 2011imm.zip -- audio files for immediate word recall from 2011 testing
   • 2011sim.zip -- audio files for similarities task from 2011 testing and Excel spreadsheet (with responses) for similarities tasks from 2011 testing

The WLS Download transcripts folder contains CHAT transcripts of cookie the theft picture descriptions done at the 2011 testing. NOTE: These transcripts are currently somewhat rough and unlinked (except for folders 00, 01, and 02). We are continuing to work on them and welcome any other assistance in this task.

Demographic data and test scores for these participants are available here.

• The first tab of the spreadsheet has data from 2004 and 2011 (see list below).
• The second tab has information about the variables and codes from 2004 and 2011.
• The third tab has the participant list with a subset of the data: age, years of education, and scores on the category fluency task at the 2011 test date. The last column shows which participants scored 1 standard deviation below the means reported for cognitively intact individuals (Tombaugh, Kozak, & Rees, 1999) on the category fluency task (see Guo, Li, Roan, Pakhomov, & Cohen, 2021).
• The fourth tab has data from the 2020 test date with sex, age, 10 variables related to diagnosis of cognitive status (e.g., level of impairment, consensus for Alzheimer's disease), and letter fluency task score.
• The fifth tab has information about the 2020 cognitive status variables.

The full set of 2004 and 2011 data in the spreadsheet includes:

1. sex
2. age, 2004
3. age, 2011
4. education -- highest level achieved
5. memory, 2011 -- during the past four weeks, how would participant describe their ability to remember things?
6. thinking, 2011 -- during the past four weeks, how would participant describe their ability to think and solve day to day problems?
7. stroke, 2011 -- has a doctor ever told participant they had a stroke?
8. mental illness, 2011 -- has participant ever been diagnosed with a mental illness?
9. letter fluency version, 2004 -- F or L
10. letter fluency, # scored words produced, 2004
11. letter fluency, raw # words produced (scored and disqualified), 2004
12. category fluency version, 2004 -- animals or food
13. category fluency, # scored words produced, 2004
14. category fluency, raw # words produced (scored and disqualified), 2004
15. similarities, 6-item score, 2004
16. immediate word recall, # words (out of 10) remembered, 2004
17. 1st word said, immediate recall, 2004
18. 2nd word said, immediate recall, 2004
19. 3rd word said, immediate recall, 2004
20. 4th word said, immediate recall, 2004
21. 5th word said, immediate recall, 2004
22. 6th word said, immediate recall, 2004
23. 7th word said, immediate recall, 2004
24. 8th word said, immediate recall, 2004
25. 9th word said, immediate recall, 2004
26. 10th word said, immediate recall, 2004
27. 11th word said, immediate recall, 2004
28. 12th word said, immediate recall, 2004
29. 13th word said, immediate recall, 2004
30. 14th word said, immediate recall, 2004
31. 15th word said, immediate recall, 2004
32. delayed word recall, # words (out of 10) remembered, 2004
33. 1st word said, delayed recall, 2004
34. 2nd word said, delayed recall, 2004
35. 3rd word said, delayed recall, 2004
36. 4th word said, delayed recall, 2004
37. 5th word said, delayed recall, 2004
38. 6th word said, delayed recall, 2004
39. 7th word said, delayed recall, 2004
40. 8th word said, delayed recall, 2004
41. 9th word said, delayed recall, 2004
42. 10th word said, delayed recall, 2004
43. 11th word said, delayed recall, 2004
44. 12th word said, delayed recall, 2004
45. 13th word said, delayed recall, 2004
46. 14th word said, delayed recall, 2004
47. 15th word said, delayed recall, 2004
48. digit ordering task score, 2004
49. letter fluency version, 2011 -- F or L
50. letter fluency, # scored words produced, 2011
51. letter fluency, raw # words produced (scored and disqualified), 2011
52. category fluency version, 2011 -- animals or food
53. category fluency, # scored words produced, 2011
54. category fluency, raw # words produced (scored and disqualified), 2011
55. similarities, 6-item score, 2011
56. digit ordering task score, 2011
57. number series task score, 2011
58. immediate word recall, # words (out of 10) remembered, 2011
59. 1st word said, immediate recall, 2011
60. 2nd word said, immediate recall, 2011
61. 3rd word said, immediate recall, 2011
62. 4th word said, immediate recall, 2011
63. 5th word said, immediate recall, 2011
64. 6th word said, immediate recall, 2011
65. 7th word said, immediate recall, 2011
66. 8th word said, immediate recall, 2011
67. 9th word said, immediate recall, 2011
68. 10th word said, immediate recall, 2011
69. 11th word said, immediate recall, 2011
70. 12th word said, immediate recall, 2011
71. delayed word recall, # words (out of 10) remembered, 2011
72. 1st word said, delayed recall, 2011
73. 2nd word said, delayed recall, 2011
74. 3rd word said, delayed recall, 2011
75. 4th word said, delayed recall, 2011
76. 5th word said, delayed recall, 2011
77. 6th word said, delayed recall, 2011
78. 7th word said, delayed recall, 2011
79. 8th word said, delayed recall, 2011
80. 9th word said, delayed recall, 2011
81. 10th word said, delayed recall, 2011
82. 11th word said, delayed recall, 2011
83. 12th word said, delayed recall, 2011
84. 13th word said, delayed recall, 2011
85. 14th word said, delayed recall, 2011
86. 15th word said, delayed recall, 2011
87. 16th word said, delayed recall, 2011
88. 17th word said, delayed recall, 2011