Starting at ages 4 and 5, children are able to follow a character’s basic thoughts and feelings in a story including the valence of the character’s feelings. This helps children with understanding what a character wants to do. 

Stanford University

The way children understand a story they are listening to or reading. Narrative processing develops throughout childhood depending on how a child can follow a character in a story.

Narrative Processing

Dore, Rebecca & Amendum, Steve & Golinkoff, Roberta & Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy. (2018). Theory of Mind: a Hidden Factor in Reading Comprehension?. Educational Psychology Review. 30. 10.1007/s10648-018-9443-9. 

Theory of Mind: a Hidden Factor in Reading Comprehension?

By age 3, children are able to follow a character’s movement in a story from the character’s perspective. 

Narrative Processing (age 3)

Narrative Processing (ages 4 to 5)

By age 7, children follow a character’s goals and misunderstandings. This is a more complex continuation of understanding a character’s thoughts since it requires following other character’s thoughts and how they interact with one another. 

Narrative Processing (ages 7)

Each theory of mind stage and narrative processing stage line up together and are about similar concepts. However, this doesn’t mean there is a causal relationship between the two. It’s also not clear if ToM stages happens before or after the narrative processing stages.

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