Research projects

Boosting children's oral narrative abilities


As part of my PhD thesis, we have designed the MultiModal Narrative (MMN) intervention program, which is a multi-tiered intervention that can be applied either at a classroom level (i.e., universal support) or at an individual level with children with linguistic and communicative difficulties (i.e., intensive support). The MMN program trains narrative macrostructure (i.e., structural elements of the narrative) as well as narrative perspective-taking abilities (i.e., understanding characters’ perspectives and emotions) with the aid of multimodal strategies (i.e., embodying the different actions and emotions of the stories).

In collaboration with:

Project supported by the Education Department (Generalitat de Catalunya)

The StoryTIC project

As part of this project, we are currently working on transforming the MMN intervention into a digital format, which will also incorporate activities with Augmented Reality.

In collaboration with:

The relationship between multimodal skills (versus motor skills) and narrative and pragmatic skills


This project has two main aims: a) to determine whether multimodal skills can predict narrative and pragmatic skills in development by comparing them to the relationship with motor skills; and b) to compare between typically-developing (TD) children and children with neurodevelopmental disorders affecting language and communication (NDD).

In collaboration with:

Improving Catalan use and competence in preschoolers 


The goal of this project is to determine whether the MultiModal Narrative (MMN) intervention can also help boost the use of Catalan language and improve Catalan phonology of Spanish-dominant preschoolers.

In collaboration with:

The relationship between pragmatic skills, mentalization and language


This longitudinal project has two main aims: 1) to analyze whether early expressive pragmatic skills at 3-4 years of age can be predictive of later linguistic skills at 5-6; and 2) to assess how receptive and expressive pragmatics relate to language and mentalization. 

In collaboration with:

Assessing children's multimodal imitation skills


This study compares the development of imitation skills in typically developing children (TD) and children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) of preschool and early school age by focusing on multimodal imitation (sentences, prosody, gesture) and analyzes its link with oral language skills.

In collaboration with:

Past projects

MultiModal MultiDimensional (M3D) labeling scheme

The team has developed the MultiModal MultiDimensional (M3D) labeling scheme for the annotation of multimodal corpora, which offers a dimensionalized approach to the annotation of communicative body movements (i.e., manual gestures, head movements, and other articulators) in terms of their form, their semantic and pragmatic contributions to speech, and their relationship to speech prosody.

In collaboration with:


Check the M3D training materials here! https://m3d.upf.edu/

The development of gesture, speech and information structure 


This project is concerned about children's multimodal development, specifically on the temporal relationship between gesture and prosodic prominence and on how children use gesture to mark information structure in discourse. 

In collaboration with:


Main findings: