Introducing the LEVANTE core tasks: open, cross-cultural measures for measuring learning and development (ages 5–12)

Blog News

Dr. Fionnuala O’Reilly & Prof. Michael C. Frank

January 14, 2026

Why is measurement such a bottleneck in developmental science?

  1. Age: Children’s abilities change rapidly with age, which makes ‘one-size-fits-all’ measurement difficult. Younger children often need tasks that are simpler, shorter, and less verbally demanding. Older children can handle more complexity, but can get bored on items designed for younger ages. The usual workaround is to use different tasks at different ages. But that creates a new problem: if the measures change, the scores aren’t comparable, which makes it harder to quantify growth or compare developmental trajectories.
  2. Cross-context comparisons are difficult: Child development is a global priority, but a lot of our tools were developed and validated in a small set of contexts—often English-speaking, Western, and with specific assumptions baked in (about schooling, language, norms, or even how children interpret instructions). If we want to understand development globally, we need tasks that are designed to be comparable across languages and cultures, so differences in scores reflect real developmental variation and not differences in measurement.
  3. Access is uneven: Many widely used measures are commercially distributed. That can mean high costs and barriers to translation or adaptation, making it harder to reuse measures, evaluate them independently, or build reproducible science.

What LEVANTE is trying to solve

  • Developmentally scalable (usable across ages 5–12, with comparable scoring)
  • Cross-culturally robust (designed for adaptation and equivalence testing across contexts)
  • Open and non-commercial (to maximise access, transparency, and reproducibility)
Figure 1: Estimated IRT ability by age across tasks and sites

Where we’re going next

  • More languages: we’re currently adapting tasks into additional languages (including French and Dutch), and expanding the infrastructure to support translation review and localisation.
  • Ages 2–4: we’re developing downward extensions (easier items, more practice, more scaffolding). Not every task will work for every age, but we expect strong usability for at least some executive function and language tasks in the preschool range.

Join us!