Dynamic Assessment of the Risk for Language and Reading Disorders in Monolingual and Multilingual Children

IRCCS Eugenio Medea

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Developmental Language Disorder; Developmental Dyslexia

Treatments: Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06937255

1036

Details and patient eligibility

About

The project represents the completion of a part of the recently concluded European project MultiMind, in which a computer platform called MuLiMi was developed and validated. The platform hosts screening tests for the identification of the risk of Language and Learning Disorders in preschool and primary school children, respectively. The aim is to validate the Dynamic Assessment (DA) tests (a first test assessing the capacity to learn new words for preschool children and a second one assessing the capacity to learn a new spelling code for school-age children) in a population of monolingual and bilingual children attending preschool and primary school. The main goal of the study is to complete the validation of the two Dynamic Assessment tests implemented in the MuLiMi platform developed for the MultiMind project.

Full description

Dynamic Assessment tests are characterized by their emphasis on the learning process activated during the test itself, focusing on measuring the improvement achieved from the beginning to the end of the test rather than the absolute level of performance. They are thus considered measures of the learning potential (in this case, language and spelling) of the assessed subject. This type of testing is used as an integration of static assessment (traditional, aimed at detecting absolute performance level) and has proven particularly useful in the assessment of multilingual children.

However, computerized tests that can also be used remotely are not currently available. For these reasons, it was found particularly useful to include this type of task within the MuLiMi computerized battery. While the other tests hosted on the MuLiMi platform concern specific L1-L2 pairs, DA tests can be applied regardless of the L1 (provided a minimum L2 mastery is present so as to understand the requests) because they assess the capacity to learn new information and are thus rather independent of previous knowledge. This study will provide baseline data for the MuLiMi battery applied to children belonging to any language minority group and thus enable it to be used comprehensively in the future for the purpose of risk assessment of language and learning disorders.

Enrollment: 150 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 4 to 9 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• age 4-6 years (Kindergarten) or 7-9 years (Primary school);
• Attendance at an Italian-language school in Italy or Switzerland/Germany.

Additional inclusion criteria for the multilingual group only:

• (i) At least one parent speaks at least one language other than Italian in the family;
• (ii) Continuous exposure to the Italian language for at least two years.

Exclusion criteria

• Intellectual disability, major psychopathological disorders, exposure to Italian language for less than two years.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Screening

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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150 participants in 8 patient groups

TD preschooler, monolingual

Active Comparator group

Description:

This group will include monolingual children who have not been referred to clinical or educational services for any delay or disorder in language abilities. They will be tested with the MuLiMi battery (lexical, phonological and morphosyntactic tests), including the DA Novel Word Learning Test (NWLT) as DA screening test. Furthermore, they will be assessed with standardized language tests providing benchmark measures for validation.

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

TD preschooler, multilingual

Active Comparator group

Description:

This group will include multilingual children who have not been referred to clinical or educational services for any delay or disorder in language abilities. They will be tested with the MuLiMi battery (lexical, phonological and morphosyntactic tests), including the DA Novel Word Learning Test (NWLT) as DA screening test. Furthermore, they will be assessed with standardized language tests providing benchmark measures for validation.

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

DLD preschooler, monolingual

Experimental group

Description:

This group will include monolingual children who have been referred to clinical or educational services because of delays or disorders in language abilities. They will be tested with the MuLiMi battery (lexical, phonological and morphosyntactic tests), including the DA Novel Word Learning Test (NWLT) as DA screening test. Furthermore, they will be assessed with standardized language tests providing benchmark measures for validation.

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

DLD preschooler, multilingual

Experimental group

Description:

This group will include multilingual children who have been referred to clinical or educational services because of delays or disorders in language abilities. They will be tested with the MuLiMi battery (lexical, phonological and morphosyntactic tests), including the DA Novel Word Learning Test (NWLT) as DA screening test. Furthermore, they will be assessed with standardized language tests providing benchmark measures for validation.

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

TD school-age, monolingual

Active Comparator group

Description:

This group will include monolingual children who have not been referred to clinical or educational services for any delay or disorder in language abilities. They will be tested with the MuLiMi battery (reading, orthographic and metaphonological tests), including the Dynamic Reading Assessment (DRA) as DA screening test. Furthermore, they will be assessed with standardized reading and language tests providing benchmark measures for validation.

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

TD school-age, multilingual

Active Comparator group

Description:

This group will include monolingual children who have not been referred to clinical or educational services for any delay or disorder in language abilities. They will be tested with the MuLiMi battery (reading, orthographic and metaphonological tests), including the Dynamic Reading Assessment (DRA) as DA screening test. Furthermore, they will be assessed with standardized reading and language tests providing benchmark measures for validation.

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

SRD school-age, monolingual

Experimental group

Description:

This group will include monolingual children who have been referred to clinical or educational services for any delay or disorder in language abilities. They will be tested with the MuLiMi battery (reading, orthographic and metaphonological tests), including the Dynamic Reading Assessment (DRA) as DA screening test. Furthermore, they will be assessed with standardized reading and language tests providing benchmark measures for validation.

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

SRD school-age, multilingual

Experimental group

Description:

This group will include multilingual children who have been referred to clinical or educational services for any delay or disorder in language abilities. They will be tested with the MuLiMi battery (reading, orthographic and metaphonological tests), including the Dynamic Reading Assessment (DRA) as DA screening test. Furthermore, they will be assessed with standardized reading and language tests providing benchmark measures for validation.

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment