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. 

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)

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. 

Narrative Processing (ages 4 to 5)

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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