What is the TEA-Ch2? The Test of Everyday Attention for Children explained

The TEA-Ch2 is the Test of Everyday Attention for Children, Second Edition, an individually administered battery that measures how well children ages 5 to 15 can focus, sustain, and switch their attention. It was developed by Tom Manly, Vicki Anderson, John Crawford, Melanie George, and Ian H. Robertson and published by Pearson in 2016. The TEA-Ch2 is a performance test given one-on-one by a trained professional, usually a clinical, school, or educational psychologist. It is an attention test rather than an IQ test: it does not produce an IQ score or measure reasoning ability. This article explains what the TEA-Ch2 measures, how its two versions are built, how scoring works, and where it fits alongside intelligence testing.

Attention is the mental ability to direct and hold cognitive resources on a task. The TEA-Ch2 treats attention as a set of separable skills instead of a single capacity. According to Pearson, the battery "uniquely measures separable aspects of attention," and the publisher describes it as a gold-standard attention test for children.

The main attention domains covered are "selective attention" (picking out targets while ignoring distractions), "sustained attention" (staying on task over time without drifting off), and "attentional switching" (moving flexibly between two different rules or tasks). Because the subtests isolate these skills from each other, an examiner can see whether a child struggles with attention across the board or only in one area, which is more informative for planning support than a single overall number.

One design choice matters for interpretation. Many school tasks that look like attention problems can also reflect language, memory, or reasoning difficulties. The TEA-Ch2 deliberately uses simple, game-like materials with minimal language and knowledge demands, so a low score is more likely to reflect attention itself. The original TEA-Ch took the same approach; the normative study by Manly and colleagues, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2001, showed that children's performance separated into distinct attention factors and that children with "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder" (ADHD) showed characteristic weaknesses.

The TEA-Ch2 comes in two age-banded forms, each with its own subtests and record forms.

• TEA-Ch2 J (Junior): designed for children ages 5 to 7. It is a shorter, simplified battery that Pearson reports takes about 35 minutes on average. Subtests include Balloon Hunt, Balloons 5, and Hide & Seek Visual (search and cancellation tasks), plus Barking and Simple RT (a basic "reaction time" measure, meaning how quickly a child responds to a signal).

• TEA-Ch2 A (Adolescent): designed for ages 8 to 15. Pearson reports it takes about 48 minutes on average in full. Subtests include Hector Cancellation, Hector-B Cancellation, and Hecuba Visual Search on the paper side, along with computer-based tasks such as Vigil, Simple RT, the Sustained Attention to Response Task, and Reds & Blues, Bags & Shoes.

Two of the newer subtests illustrate the flavor of the battery. In the "Sustained Attention to Response Task" (SART), the child presses a key each time a shape appears but must withhold the press when a triangle shows up, a classic measure of sustained attention and response control. In Reds & Blues, Bags & Shoes (RBBS), the child switches between two rules while responding to simple pictures, which taxes attentional switching.

The second edition also changed the format. Paper subtests use a colorful comic-book style that feels more like a game than a test, which helps younger children stay engaged. Computer-based subtests record accuracy and reaction time on every trial and are scored by the program rather than by hand. Individual subtests run from about 2 minutes for short cancellation tasks to roughly 10 minutes for the longer sustained attention tasks, and Pearson advises giving the battery in its entirety in the set order.

The TEA-Ch2 uses the same scoring conventions as most modern cognitive batteries. Raw subtest scores convert to "scaled scores" with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3, ranging from 1 to 19. The norms are regression-based and take the child's age and gender into account, and they can also adjust for family education level if the examiner provides it.

When the required subtests have been completed, the scoring program combines them into composite index scores, each on the familiar scale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15:

• Selective Attention Index: summarizes performance on tasks that require finding targets among distractors.

• Sustained Attention Index: summarizes performance on tasks that require staying focused over a stretch of time.

• Everyday Attention Index: an overall composite reflecting performance across the battery.

The program also reports "percentile ranks," which tell you what percentage of same-age children in the norm sample scored at or below a given score, and it places a 95 percent confidence interval around every score to reflect measurement error. The norms come from a UK sample: Pearson reports 394 children ages 5 to 8 for the Junior version and 621 children ages 8 to 16 for the Adolescent version.

The most common reason a child takes the TEA-Ch2 is a question about attention. Attention problems are among the most frequent referral concerns in child psychology. According to the CDC, an estimated 7 million U.S. children ages 3 to 17, about 11.7 percent, had a current ADHD diagnosis based on 2024 data, with boys diagnosed roughly twice as often as girls.

A performance test like the TEA-Ch2 plays a specific role in that kind of evaluation. Rating scales such as the Conners questionnaires capture how parents and teachers perceive a child's behavior, while the TEA-Ch2 measures what the child actually does on controlled attention tasks. Pearson notes that in its clinical comparison data, children with attention problems scored significantly lower on several subtests, including Balloon Hunt, Barking, and Simple RT on the Junior form and Vigil, Simple RT, and RBBS on the Adolescent form. No single test result diagnoses ADHD, and a careful evaluation combines interviews, rating scales, history, and performance testing interpreted by a qualified clinician. Research groups have also adapted the TEA-Ch family internationally; a 2019 study in Developmental Neuropsychology reported Greek normative data and found the battery discriminated children with combined-type ADHD from typical peers.

Examiners also use the TEA-Ch2 beyond ADHD questions, for example with children who have sustained brain injuries or who show attention lapses alongside learning difficulties, because the profile of index scores helps target interventions and track change over time.

The TEA-Ch2 has clear strengths: engaging materials, computer-recorded precision on timed tasks, separable attention indices, and norms that adjust for demographic factors. It also has honest limitations worth knowing.

• UK-based norms: the standardization sample is British, so examiners elsewhere should interpret scores with that context in mind.

• Narrow construct coverage: it measures attention only. A full neuropsychological picture usually requires additional tools, such as the NEPSY-II for broader neuropsychological domains or an intelligence test for reasoning ability.

• Availability status: Pearson announced that the TEA-Ch2 complete kit and manual went out of print after May 31, 2024, and that the scoring software is no longer sold or supported. Record forms for both versions remain available so existing users can keep testing. Families should not be surprised if clinics increasingly substitute other attention measures.

• Moderate reliability on some subtests: the publisher reports internal consistency ranging from moderate to good, with most subtests in the good range. Short attention tasks are inherently noisier than long composite scores, which is one reason the indices are the preferred level of interpretation.

The TEA-Ch2 answers a different question than an intelligence test. An IQ test estimates general cognitive ability, including reasoning, knowledge, and problem solving, while the TEA-Ch2 profiles the attention skills that support learning. The two are related but distinct; many children with attention difficulties score well within the average range on intelligence measures, a pattern explored in our article on IQ and ADHD. A thorough evaluation often includes both kinds of tests.

For adults who want a rigorous measure of their own cognitive ability, the RIOT IQ test (the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test) was developed by RIOT IQ with psychometrician Dr. Russell T. Warne for ages 18 and up. It includes 15 subtests across six cognitive indices (verbal reasoning, fluid reasoning, spatial ability, working memory, processing speed, and reaction time), takes about 52 minutes, and reports scores on the same mean-100, standard-deviation-15 scale used by the TEA-Ch2 indices. Like any online measure, it does not replace an individually administered diagnostic evaluation. It offers a well-normed estimate of general ability for personal insight. You can take the RIOT IQ test at riotiq.com.

No. The TEA-Ch2 measures attention skills such as selective attention, sustained attention, and attentional switching. It does not produce an IQ score, and its materials are intentionally low in language and reasoning demands.

Children and adolescents from 5 to 15 years old. The Junior version (TEA-Ch2 J) serves ages 5 to 7, and the Adolescent version (TEA-Ch2 A) serves ages 8 to 15.

Pearson reports the Junior version averages about 35 minutes and the Adolescent version about 48 minutes, with the US product page listing ranges of 35 to 40 and 40 to 55 minutes respectively.

No test diagnoses ADHD by itself. The TEA-Ch2 contributes objective performance data to an evaluation that also includes clinical interviews, developmental history, and parent and teacher rating scales, all interpreted by a qualified clinician.

Partially. Pearson states the complete kit and manual went out of print after May 31, 2024, and the software is no longer sold or supported, but record forms for both versions remain available for existing users.

Subtest scaled scores with a mean of 10 and standard deviation of 3, plus three composite indices (Selective Attention, Sustained Attention, and Everyday Attention) with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15, along with percentile ranks and confidence intervals.

1. Pearson Clinical Assessment UK. (2016). Test of Everyday Attention for Children, Second Edition (TEA-Ch2). pearsonclinical.co.uk

2. Pearson Assessments US. (2016). Test of Everyday Attention for Children, Second Edition (TEA-Ch2). pearsonassessments.com

3. 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. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42(8), 1065-1081. doi.org

4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2026). Data on ADHD in children. cdc.gov

5. Malegiannaki, A. C., Aretouli, E., Metallidou, P., Messinis, L., Zafeiriou, D., & Kosmidis, M. H. (2019). Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch): Greek normative data and discriminative validity for children with combined type of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Developmental Neuropsychology, 44(2). doi.org

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