In the last twenty years, the scientific community has discovered that from early childhood the mind is based on the chrono-causal connection of events, that is, on narratives in which we learn to correlate causes to effects, intentions to purposes, inner propensities to external events. Today in the narratological, psychological and pedagogical fields we know the importance of narratives for the identity, socio-cognitive, emotional and behavioral development of individuals. Active / passive storytelling develops skills such as empathy, memory, reasoning, sequential thinking, Mind Reading, problem solving, counterfactual imagination, especially during childhood period (0-11 years). Only recently has it been discovered that visuals are the first grammar of communication and the first environmental mapping system learned by the individuals, and that on the basis of them we grammaticalize verbal language. We now have a Visual Narrative Grammar developed by the narratologist and cognitivist Neil Cohn.
This understanding is changing the horizons of literacy. It has become necessary to formulate a research project that validates and tests this Visual Narrative Grammar, given that visual storytelling, combined with verbal language, brings greater benefits, especially in early childhood. Verbal and visual storytelling increases cognitive potential because it requires segmenting the experiential flow into a closed series of frames and scripts, filling the information gap between one frame and another. From these latest investigations, the VISION project was born in order to test the importance and efficiency of visual storytelling on the emotional and cognitive development of children aged 6 to 11, through a longitudinal study consisting of administering tests / exercises containing sequences of visual frames (which must be imagined, modified or completed) to an experimental sample. The project aims to: (i) highlight the evolution of children's narrative skills through visual storytelling; (ii) show how the use of exercises based on a specific visual grammar acts as a cognitive and emotional training ground for the development of the child; (iii) develop a methodology capable of offering these tools in school and educational settings, in order to implement visual literacy, which therefore acts as an adjunct to verbal communication. The visual stories of the children examined, collected in some primary schools in the country, will be studied, digitized and collected in a new Digital Archive of Childhood Narrations. Finally, based on the data collected, visual narrative formats will be drawn up and a mobile application will be implemented for primary school teachers and educators, in order to offer new teaching and learning methodologies that add visual to verbal literacy.