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RecruitingNCT06937255Updated Nov 5, 2026

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

An interventional study of computerized Dynamic Assessment in Developmental Dyslexia and Developmental Language Disorder, sponsored by IRCCS Eugenio Medea. Recruiting at 1 site in Italy. Open to participants aged 4 Years to 9 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-11-05.

Sponsored by IRCCS Eugenio Medea · Not applicable, Interventional, and Screening

From the registry’s dates

  • Registered 11 months after the study started (first participant enrolled Apr 2023, registered Mar 2024).
  • Started Apr 2023; still recruiting 3 years 7 months later.
Updated Nov 5, 2026Primary completion movedStudy completion moved+1 moreGo to Updates ↓
Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
150
Allocation
Non-randomized
Ages
4 Years to 9 Years
Sex
All
01

Study summary

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.

Read the detailed 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.

02

Conditions studied

  • Developmental Dyslexia
  • Developmental Language Disorder

Keywords

  • Developmental Dyslexia
  • Developmental Language Disorder
  • Dynamic Assessment
  • computerized assessment
  • multilingual population
  • children
03

In context

Dyslexia

127 studies on the registry are indexed under Dyslexia; 27 are open to participants now.

This study's planned enrollment of 150 is above the median of 71 across 106 interventional studies indexed under Dyslexia.

Browse Dyslexia studies →

Lead sponsor

IRCCS Eugenio Medea is the lead sponsor of 108 studies on the registry; 51 are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

04

Who can participate

Ages eligible
4 Years to 9 Years
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
Yes

Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.

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

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Intellectual disability, major psychopathological disorders, exposure to Italian language for less than two years.
05

Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Screening
Allocation
Non-randomized
Intervention model
Parallel assignment
Masking
None (open label)
Enrollment
150 participants (estimated)

Study arms

  • Active comparator
    TD preschooler, monolingual

    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.

    Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

  • Active comparator
    TD preschooler, multilingual

    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.

    Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

  • Experimental
    DLD preschooler, monolingual

    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.

    Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

  • Experimental
    DLD preschooler, multilingual

    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.

    Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

  • Active comparator
    TD school-age, monolingual

    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.

    Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

  • Active comparator
    TD school-age, multilingual

    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.

    Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

  • Experimental
    SRD school-age, monolingual

    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.

    Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

  • Experimental
    SRD school-age, multilingual

    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.

    Diagnostic Test: computerized Dynamic Assessment

Interventions

  • Diagnostic testcomputerized Dynamic Assessment

    The DA tests (with a duration of about 30 minutes) can be administered by accessing the digital platform MuLiMi, individually with the experimenter or examiner. The tests are in game form and require children to learn the names of characters presented in the context of stories (preschool version) or to learn new codes for reading and writing (primary school version). In both cases, the new materials (names or codes) are repeatedly presented to the child until (s)he reaches an accuracy threshold. The number of repetitions needed to reach the threshold constitutes the main measure of the child's learning capacity, together with the number of errors committed during the various cycles.

    Also known as: MuLiMi Dynamic Assessment tools

06

What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. accuracy during task performance

    total number and % correct answers, number and % errors during task performance

    Time frame: day 1 and day 2 (one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue)

  2. efficiency during task performance

    number of repeated cycles, number of cycles needed to reach target performance

    Time frame: day 1 and day 2 (during assessment, which will last one or two days, in one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue)

07

Study locations

1 of 1 sites recruiting
08

References and documents

Publications

  • MacLeod AAN, Glaspey AM. Dynamic assessment of multilingual children's word learning. Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2022 Jul;57(4):822-851. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12723. Epub 2022 Apr 16. PubMed 35429340 ↗
  • Orellana CI, Wada R, Gillam RB. The Use of Dynamic Assessment for the Diagnosis of Language Disorders in Bilingual Children: A Meta-Analysis. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2019 Aug 9;28(3):1298-1317. doi: 10.1044/2019_AJSLP-18-0202. Epub 2019 Jun 13. PubMed 31194570 ↗
  • Hunt E, Nang C, Meldrum S, Armstrong E. Can Dynamic Assessment Identify Language Disorder in Multilingual Children? Clinical Applications From a Systematic Review. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2022 Apr 11;53(2):598-625. doi: 10.1044/2021_LSHSS-21-00094. Epub 2022 Mar 1. PubMed 35230888 ↗
09

Updates

1 registry update since Sep 25, 2026
Primary completion
Dec 2025→Dec 2028
Nov 5, 2026
Study completion
Dec 2025→Dec 2028
Nov 5, 2026
Primary outcomes
2 time frame changed
What changed in the outcomes
  • Time frameaccuracy during task performanceone or two days (one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue) → day 1 and day 2 (one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue)
  • Time frameefficiency during task performanceIntervention occurs during assessment: assessment will last one or two days (one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue) → day 1 and day 2 (during assessment, which will last one or two days, in one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue)
Nov 5, 2026
Show all 1 update
  1. Nov 5, 2026
    Primary completion Dec 2025→Dec 2028
    Study completion Dec 2025→Dec 2028
    Primary outcomes 2 time frame changed
    What changed in the outcomes
    • Time frameaccuracy during task performanceone or two days (one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue) → day 1 and day 2 (one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue)
    • Time frameefficiency during task performanceIntervention occurs during assessment: assessment will last one or two days (one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue) → day 1 and day 2 (during assessment, which will last one or two days, in one or two consecutive sessions depending on participant's age, collaboration and fatigue)
    + 3 other changes: index terms, verification date and oversight details

From the registry record's own update history. This site started tracking changes on Sep 25, 2026; for anything earlier, see the record history on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

10

Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT06937255
Responsible party
Sponsor
First posted
Apr 22, 2025
Start date
Apr 3, 2023
Primary completion
Dec 2028 (estimated)
Completion
Dec 2028 (estimated)
Last update
Nov 5, 2026

Study contacts

Maria Luisa Lorusso, Ph.D
Contact
marialuisa.lorusso@lanostrafamiglia.it
031-877592
Maria Luisa Lorusso, Ph.D
principal investigator · IRCCS E. Medea

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

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