The representation of mental states in young children’s writings: the role of early narratives in supporting theory of mind

ABSTRACT

Learning to write is a complex process involving linguistic, cognitive, and socio-emotional factors. From a developmental perspective, little research has explored the content of young children’s writings in terms of specific cognitive skills such as Theory of Mind (TOM). This study explores how young children’s writing may foster representations of inner life, their own and others, through the characters created and through an awareness of the reader’s perspective. A total of 204 written compositions were gathered throughout one school year from 24 6-to-7-year-olds. The results indicate that while tackling the complexity of word and sentence composition, significant cognitive resources are allocated to the content of the stories, the characters’ experiences but also the reader’s understanding of the plots created. The findings offer important implications for supporting children’s TOM through early fiction writing and highlight the importance of naturalistic data in uncovering young children’s growing insights about others’ thoughts and emotions.

KEYWORDS:

• Theory of mind
• narrative writing

Introduction

The importance of early literacy skills related to writing has received significantly less attention both in terms of research and practice compared to reading (Hacker, 2018; Watanabe & Hall-Kenyon, 2011). Written composition is an important component of literacy and plays a key role in learning at school. Translating ideas into written language requires a set of complex skills and interrelated processes including linguistic, cognitive, and social factors (Guimaraes & Parkins, 2019; MacArthur & Graham, 2016). For the young writer, this process involves problem-solving tasks of particular challenge (MacArthur & Graham, 2016) associated with a simultaneous focus on generating ideas expressed in sentences and on transcription skills such as spelling words (Bigozzi et al., 2016; Hayes & Berninger, 2010).

Early in primary school, significant emphasis is placed on the development of transcription skills through phonics teaching, but an overemphasis on early word spelling can negatively affect young children’s levels of motivation toward literacy and writing (Flynn et al., 2021; Quinn & Bingham, 2018). Encouraging spontaneous written narratives on the other hand can support important socio-cognitive skills significant for early literacy (Fernandez, 2011; Kendeou et al., 2005). Emerging research highlights the important role that metacognitive skills and a representation of others’ mental states may have on young children’s literacy acquisition in relation to reading (Hacker, 2018; Hughes & Devine, 2019; Lecce et al., 2021). However, the lack of research in this area is particularly evident in the context of text composition (Chilton, Mayer, & McCracken, 2019). The present study investigates young children’s written narratives as key contexts for fostering TOM (Theory of Mind). The aim is to advance our understanding of how writing can constitute an important process through which representations about people’s minds are developed. Using a longitudinal naturalistic approach rarely applied in this area (Quinn & Bingham, 2018) can offer new developmental perspectives, with direct implications for practice.

Narratives and storytelling are central to culture, communication, and humans’ socio-emotional nature (Zack, 2014). The use of oral narratives develops very early, children’s stories gradually evolving to more coherent structures, exploring themes and characters that reflect their experiences and milieu (Makinen et al. 2014; Nicolopoulou 2008; Svensson, 2018). Narratives become more complex during primary school years (Makinen et al. 2014; Zanchi & Zampini, 2020), supporting children’s understanding of their experiences.

Narratives are often defined as accounts of events occurring over time including specific components such as a main goal, an attempt from protagonist(s) to achieve that goal and the resolution of the goal (Bruner, 1991; Freer et al., 2011; Nicolopoulou, 2008). However, the assumption that a narrative must include a complication-resolution structure has been questioned owing to the fact it may exclude other culturally diverse forms of storytelling (Caldwell & White, 2017).

An important process in creating narratives is the ability to shift attention from one’s own immediate experience to others’ mental states, through cognitive processes linked to TOM (Alicea & Lysaker, 2017). TOM refers to the understanding that individuals are mental beings, with thoughts, feelings and intentions that explain their behaviour (Chilton et al., 2019; Hughes & Devine, 2019). From a developmental perspective, the ability to ascribe mental states to others and oneself emerges from a gradual understanding about people’s minds in the context of early social experiences (Hobson, 1991; Villiers, 2007). The social nature of TOM is closely linked to communication, with language playing an important part in children’s representation of mental states and metacognition (Ebert, 2020). However, the relationship between language and TOM is complex, multidimensional and at times bidirectional (Zufferey, 2010). The multidimensional nature of TOM reflects both cognitive and affective dimensions (Westby, 2013), which although interlinked involve distinct neural patterns (Schlaffke et al., 2014). Cognitive representations include understanding others’ thoughts and intentions, whilst affective perspective taking is centred on inferences about others’ (and the child’s own) emotional states (Schlaffke et al., 2014).

Experimental research on the development of TOM has been dominated by ‘false belief tasks’ where young children are required to predict how a character will act based on a mistaken belief (Ebert, 2020; Pelletier & Astington, 2004). This overreliance on the ‘false belief paradigm’ as a measure of TOM in pre-school years has received criticism however (Apperley, 2011): children often show inconsistent outcomes on false belief tasks while still displaying understanding of mental states in spontaneous everyday social contexts (Shatz, 2015). As a result, there have been calls to extend the study of TOM to educational contexts which may encourage children’s representations of others’ minds more naturally (Pelletier & Astington, 2004; Smogorzewska et al., 2020).

TOM plays an important role in young children’s academic achievement, including literacy skills (Lecce et al., 2014). When reading, children need to attribute meaning to key elements in the narrative structure, for example, the actions of characters in a story (Atkinson et al., 2017; Lecce et al., 2021). Albeit less researched, TOM is also essential for writing. To be understood by an audience, the writer needs to take into consideration the perspective of the reader, including, in the case of a story, writing about the characters’ motivations and encompassing their perspective of events (Chilton et al., 2019; Fernandez, 2011). Moreover, the writer needs to ‘align’ the narrative with the reader’s perspective to convey what the reader needs to know in order to understand the message (Apperly, 2011). For example, the writer communicates the characters’ inner worlds through providing important temporal or causal contextual information in the plot. Adopting specific discourse strategies in written narratives can also illustrate young children’s effort to directly interact with the audience (Drijbooms et al., 2015, Drijbooms et al., 2017, Gorman et al., 2011). This process of alignment in written communication emerges from children’s understanding of narratives as social scripts, and perspective-taking skills (Apperly, 2011). It reflects the interactive nature of language and social-cognitive skills in writing (see Drijbooms et al., 2017).

In sum, narratives offer young children opportunities to understand others as mental beings, from the character’s visual perspective to their thoughts and goals (Nicolopoulou, 2008; Pelletier & Astington, 2004; Ronfard & Harris, 2014). However, past research suggests that it is not until later in primary school years, that children portray characters in their narratives as mental agents and show audience awareness in their writings with frequency (Nicolopoulou, 2008; Peskin et al., 2014). Accordingly, it is only in middle childhood that children extend TOM skills to a variety of contexts (Lecce et al. 2014) sufficient that these become frequently part of their narrative writings. This raises the question whether the complexity of the transcription process in early writing may prevent young children from focusing cognitive resources on representations of the mind (Hayes & Berninger, 2010). In a recent study with a group of deaf children between 7 and 10 years of age, Chilton et al. (2019) found evidence of TOM in children’s written compositions after being asked to write a story that was first presented as a picture book. Although some children created descriptive accounts of the story, many compositions showed evidence of TOM, with references to the characters’ mental or emotional states (Chilton et al., 2019).

The present study investigates early written compositions as contexts for children’s development of representations about people’s mental states by exploring the following research questions: Does early narrative writing in primary school encourages TOM? And if so, how does TOM emerge in children’s writings? The study combines two areas that have predominantly been studied using experimental designs, addressing the need for more naturalistic and developmentally sensitive ways to capture young children’s TOM in the context of everyday communication experiences (Bigozzi et al., 2016; Drijbooms et al., 2015; Pelletier & Astington, 2004). Adopting a longitudinal procedure to gather data through a whole-class approach can offer direct implications for classroom literacy practice.

Materials and methods

Sample

A group of 24 children from a Year 2 class in an Independent primary school in England (East Midlands) took part in the study: 14 boys and 10 girls, with an average age of 6.5 years at the start of the study (range 6.1–7). Written permissions for carrying out the study were gathered from the headteacher, classroom teacher and children’s parents. Oral consent was gathered from the children, who were free to participate or not in each point of data collection. All the children from one class for whom participation in the study was granted took part in the study. No children were reported as having SEN.

The school followed the national curriculum for England. Children regularly engaged in a range of literacy activities in the classroom, both in small group activities as well as in the context of one-to-one support and were encouraged to take books from the library to read at home.

Writing task and procedure

As for gathering the children’s compositions, a writing task was developed which included an image at the top of a page and lined space just underneath it. A different picture was used each month and children were asked to look at the picture and write about what they could see, or create a story about it. To ensure that the data collection procedure was kept the same across the school year, a structured procedure was adopted where it was explained to the children that during the writing they should not consult others. Teachers were asked to give children approximately 20 min to complete the writing task but children could decide if they would like to end their writing earlier. The data was gathered during one academic year from October till July, with one composition gathered per month for each child, resulting in a total of 204 compositions. Due to teaching organization no data were gathered in November. Some individual data is also missing for children who were not present on the days of the data collection.

The pictures used in the writing tasks were selected from picture books, including ‘Usborne tales the first 100 words in English’ by Amery and Cartwright (1992) and a collection of books by Muller (1994): ‘Autumn’, ‘Winter’, ‘Lenten’ and ‘Zommer’. The sequence of pictures used during the academic year was decided so as to ensure that both indoor and outdoor scenes were included (e.g. a family in a kitchen, children playing in a field). Images were involved in gathering children’s compositions as they have been shown to place fewer demands on children’s long-term memory, facilitating narrative creation in terms of planning (Freer et al., 2011; Williams & Larkin, 2013).

Scoring

The first step in the data analysis involved classifying the type of compositions created by the 24 children across the academic year. In this way each composition was classified according to the genre created based on 5 different categories: (1) Description, (2) Observation, (3) Emerging narrative, (4) Basic narrative and (5) Complex narrative (see Bigozzi et al., 2016, Fiorreti et al., 2019 & Quinn & Bingham, 2018). These categories are defined, as follows:

The category ‘Description’ encompasses compositions where children simply name what they identify in the picture, creating basic (and at times incomplete) sentences, which includes listing events or objects. ‘Observation’ encompasses the description of the picture accompanied by some comments about the meaning of what is described, for example explaining the reason for why something was happening or interconnecting points the child sees in the image.

An ‘Emerging narrative’ is seen when elements of story structure are incorporated into the text also containing descriptive or observational aspects in the composition. This can be the adoption of a traditional start to a story, such as ‘once upon a time’ and the addition of story elements such as characters and events. ‘Basic narratives’ are more complete in the story elements used, in the creation of characters and links between events. In the ‘Complex narrative’ type a complete (or almost complete) story structure is present which includes: an opening, character(s), setting, problem or main events and a resolution/closing. To be scored as a complex narrative, global coherence needed to be evident.

The second and main process in the analysis involved identifying children’s perspective-taking and references to internal states and representations of the inner life. As discussed earlier and identified in Table 1, TOM includes different dimensions and subdimensions. The analysis process, although based on the below classification (Daiute & Buteau, 2002; Fernandez, 2011), also carefully considered the context of the sentence or expression in the analysis of mental state lexicon, to ensure that it reflected an actual understanding of TOM (Zufferey, 2010). The scoring criteria involved counting the number of expressions referring to mental states with 1 point given to each mental state/expression separately identified (Zanchi & Zampini, 2020). Examples of expression of awareness of others’ thoughts, emotional states and goals are presented in Table 1. Also, TOM skills were analysed in relation to an explicit awareness of the reader and an intention to ‘capture the reader’s attention through numerous narrative devices’ (Fioretti et al., 2019, p. 213).

Table 1. Criteria used to analyse children’s compositions in terms of representations of inner life.

Internal states	Examples of terms or expressions referring to internal states
1. Motivation/intentions	Want, try to, going to
2. Ability	Can, hard to do, managed
3. Emotions	Happy/sad, afraid, enjoy, worry
4. Cognition	Think, know, forget/remember, understand/ misunderstand, imagine, dream
5. Physiological states	Being hungry/sleepy, feeling sick/tired
6. Temporal and spatial contextualization from the perspective of the character (not evident in the image)	Indicating that one event is going on at the same time as another: Whilst this was happening …  He could see who was inside …
8. Adjustments to speech register that show an understanding of writing to an audience	Questions directed to the reader Capturing the reader’s attention through narrative devices Use of humour

The software NVivo was used to code the children’s written compositions, ensuring that the consistency of the coding process across compositions was systematically checked. In addition, the data analysis process explored the context and nature of children’s attribution of mental states to the characters created and the awareness of the reader’s perspective in their writings. The SPSS software program was used in the statistical analysis of the data, including descriptive analysis, correlational coefficients as well inter-rater reliability.

Inter-rater reliability was calculated for scoring children’s compositions where an independent scorer, with an academic background in psychology, separately scored 46 narratives including all compositions from February and May, making it 22.4% of all compositions. The inter-rater reliability scores were .935 and .938 (Cronbach’s Alpha).

Results

A total of 204 compositions were gathered between October and July of one academic year, with an average word count per monthly composition ranging from 42 to 90 words (Table 2). Diversity was found in the types of texts created by the 24 children, with narratives (emerging narratives to more complex narratives) being most of texts created (Table 3).

Table 2. Number of compositions and average number of words written by children per monthly composition.

	N Compositions	N Word Mean	N Word Minimum	N Word Maximum	SD
October	22	84.77	36.00	148.00	28.66
December	22	63.68	12.00	117.00	23.83
January	21	42.05	8.00	109.00	21.67
February	22	78.40	22.00	175.00	35.78
March	23	58.87	15.00	192.00	34.41
April	23	70.30	28.00	135.00	30.88
May	24	90.17	16.00	193.00	41.24
June	23	61.88	21.00	126.00	23.82
July	24	82.58	50.00	177.00	28.37
Total	204

Table 3. Classification of children’s compositions according to type of text created.

Type of text	Number of compositions	Percentage
1. Description	15	7.35%
2. Observation	57	24.43%
3. Emerging narrative	42	24.10%
4. Narrative	62	30.39%
5. Complex narrative	28	13.73%

Analysing the mental state lexicon in all compositions guided by the classification adopted in this study, the results show that TOM was evident in many compositions. Table 4 shows the frequency of mental state terms identified in relation to the different dimensions. Higher frequencies were noted in relation to emotions, cognition and motivation. It is important to emphasize that evidence of TOM in the writings varied greatly across children, from a minimum of 1 term/expression across one child’s total writings to a maximum of 24 terms/ expressions observed for another’s (SD 5.34) (Table 5).

Table 4. Frequency of mental state terms in children’s compositions grouped according to dimension/category.

TOM dimension	Total number of mental state terms/expression
Motivation	57
Ability	18
Emotions	70
Cognition	54
Physiological states	20
Point of view of the character in terms of space/time/location	38
Explicit awareness of reader	24

Table 5. Average TOM noted in compositions per child.

Mean	11.46
Std. deviation	5.34
Minimum	1.00
Maximum	24.00

The results show that the emergence of terms and expressions evidencing TOM were significantly correlated with the type of composition created; that is, the more complex the narrative composition the more references to TOM were present. Descriptive compositions (Types 1 and 2 in Table 3), on the other hand, included significantly less evidence of TOM. This carries important implications as to whether story writing, in particular, offers young children rich contexts for supporting the development of TOM. Spearman’s rank correlation was computed to assess the relationship between the type of composition created (description, narrative, etc.) and frequency of TOM lexicon with a positive significant correlation found between the two variables, r (24-1) = .762, p = .000.

Qualitative analysis of children’s narratives

To further understand the role of narratives in supporting young children’s representation of mental states, extracts from a qualitative analysis are presented here which illustrate the dimensions of TOM considered in the context of the children’s scripts. Individual children are pseudonymized. Words inside parentheses represent words crossed by the children in the texts. Square brackets indicate the child’s intended spelling.

Diversity in the types of texts created and the emergence of ToM in narratives

As aforementioned the compositions created across the academic year were varied, in terms of the type of texts but also in terms of evidence of TOM found in the compositions. This diversity was noted across children, but also within individual children throughout the year, with some texts being descriptive compositions and others narratives varying in complexity. This is an interesting result only possible with longitudinal naturalistic data, as each month children could decide the type of text to create. The following extracts illustrate well differences noted across the data in terms of the type of texts created, in relation to one child, Daniel, who in October simply listed what he saw in the picture:

1. I can see people fillying kites.

2. I can see seagulls in the sky.

3. I can see a yot. [yacht].

A descriptive structure that he also adopts later in April:

I can see a car.

I can see some (pepol) people fishing.

I can see a lake.

However, as the next extract shows, Daniel alternated his descriptive texts with narratives where references to the characters’ inner states started to emerge: ‘The Lost dog. One day a boy went to the playground with his dog. On the way the dog was barking because he didn’t like going to the playgrond' (March).

Similarly, Natalia created a descriptive composition in March: ‘There is a playground and there are lots of children playing in it four people are on the swings there is a man walking his dog’ but in May her writing evidences an understanding of her characters’ inner experiences in the context of a story: ‘Olivia and Natalia got into the car Olivia and Natalia got into the frun and Zarah climbed into the back. Olivia pointed were they neaded to go. it was very hard for Natalia to drive and the snow. Olivia ace dently pointed the rong way so they had to turn back agin.’ This example also illustrates how children’s early fiction writing draws closely from their direct experiences. The characters in Natalia’s story are named after herself and her classroom friends, while also moving away from direct experience where the characters behave like adults and have imagined adventures.

In terms of the images used, the same picture often led to a very distinct type of composition. For example, in May Liam wrote: ‘A Snowey day. One day a boy called James hork up and looked out of his window. And saw snow so he went down stairs and said to his mum can I go out sidut side and played e and play mum yes.’ While for the same picture Luca created a descriptive text: ‘There is a big willow tree in the snow. There is two birds fling. There is a car. There is a bag. There is a boy on a bike.’

Transcription skills: challenges but not obstacles to story writing

Across the data analysed, the transcription process and spelling, in particular, remain very challenging for most children throughout the year. In February, Karam wrote ‘A boy is planting sumthing a boy and a gull (auly) are play ing with a bout [boat] a boy and a gurll [girl]are feeding the fish.’ In May Karam is still finding spelling challenging: ‘There are popol scattnig [scatting] on a frosa [frozen] pond. Sum body has forlun [fallen] ove on the ice.’ For most children the transcription process becomes easier as the year progresses: for example in October Ela wrote ‘hera r lots of Pelpy. And ther ar two ships. And ther is a nibby willy to. And sum kias.’ By July her spelling has improved significantly: ‘One day I went to the beech when I got there I saw a girl playing with a ball. I said can I play the girl said yes we saw two boys playing with a ruby duck.’

It is relevant to note that the challenges faced by children in terms of spelling do not prevent them from creating stories early in the school year. For example, Jan wrote in October ‘Wons a pona tim on a bitsh ther was a dofing [Once upon a time on a beach there was a dolphin].’ These challenges also do not prevent children from engaging with the content of what they write: this can be observed in another extract by Jan later in July when the transcription process is still challenging but he is considering his character’s mental states: ‘mark whent of to mack [make] a sandcasel. It was very very big. It thuck [took] about twenty minets [minutes]. he thut [thought] it was the best sand casel in the world. But it wasunt [wasn’t].’

Dimensions of theory of mind in children’s compositions

As discussed earlier, evidence of TOM was analysed in relation to distinct dimensions, including motivation, ability, emotions, cognition and perspective of the character in relation to time or location. An explicit consideration of the audience was also analysed.

One important aspect of children’s ability to understand others’ minds relates to the awareness of what motivates people’s behaviour and intentions. Many of the compositions contained terms to explain characters’ motivations. Karam’s story (June) is a clear example of this: ‘One day there was a gill (ho) who need sum nuw [new] shoos [shoes] so hur mum tuc hur [took her] to the shop to biy sum nuw shoos (…) she sor [saw] a dress that she wontd to biy [wanted to buy] she tried it on but it was to big.’ Similarly, Mathew (June) wrote ‘He wanted to by a toy but his mum woldnot let him’ and Rebecca (July) explained ‘Emily got him an ice-cream and he liked it very much and he wanted another on she sad ‘no’ they went home for tea.’

Children also made frequent references to the characters’ abilities (and difficulties): Mark (May) wrote ‘It got so bisy [busy] William fell so his friend tried to pull him up but he cood not so he called for some help,’ and Ray (June) explained how the main character in his story ‘could run very fast’ when wearing her new shoes ‘and could not stop.’

In terms of cognition, many references were noted in the compositions in relation to the characters’ internal states of being asleep, awake and even dreaming. For example, Ela (May) wrote ‘two birds woke Olivia up’ while Freddie (February) narrates how ‘that night they dreamed about the fish.’ It is interesting how in this example Freddie shows an understanding that a day’s events can influence dreams, as in his story the main character was playing with a fish tank during the day. Consciousness is also alluded to in relation to internal states that influence behaviour, as Thomas’ narrative extract (May) illustrates: ‘One day a boy called Jim wouk [woke] up feeling very boncey.’

References to the characters’ mental activity including thoughts, knowing and understanding were frequent in the writings, as illustrated in the following two extracts: ‘We thout he would fall of. But he did not fall of’ (Arjun, October) and ‘Sam did not know the time so he came while Samanther was having pudding’ (Ayla, June). The process of forgetting and remembering emerged in several compositions as part of the protagonists’ cognitive processes, such as ‘they went in the sea but one of them was sun bathing and she forgot to put her sun cream on’ (Jo, July) and ‘One day I was going to meat in church street but Jelbut did not cum I watted [waited] and watted and then I remebr [remember] he was ill’ (Zarah, December). Oli (May) also shows an understanding of others’ minds in this narrative extract where the central character ‘Just then […] had an idia his idia was to go down the road and get his frend Charles to ice skat with him. When he had got to his friends house he wasn’t.’ Representing other more complex cognitive concepts was sometimes noted in the context of the stories created, as Thomas (April) explains: ‘The baby saw a lighthouse. The baby wundurd [wondered] wat it was.’

Categorizing evidence of TOM according to separate dimensions was at times challenging as many expressions reveal rich examples where emotions and cognition are interlinked, as in the following extract from Freddie’s story (March): ‘Mr and Mrs. Jaksons dog just chased the ducks and he thot [thought] that was fun.’

Children often attributed emotional states to the characters in their stories, as seen in relation to preferences, likes and dislikes. This is illustrated in Zarah’s writing (July): ‘They loved to go to Spain they liked to go on the beach and make sand-cassles.’ These young writers acknowledged in their stories the contrasting nature of emotions experienced by characters: for example, being happy about something, but also being sad about it, liking or disliking it. In one example Zarah (March) wrote how: ‘One day (M) Mrs (bo) brown took (her hur) her two children out shopping they dod not like (going) giowing shopping. But the toy and (dres) dress shop they liked the most. But when it came to food shopping they said Oh no.’ Understanding the complexity of human emotions, such as diversity in people’s reactions to the same event, is illustrated in Thomas’ extract (December): ‘One day in a Street a lorry had a flat tier. A man happend to be walking along with his dog. The dog sniffed the lorry drivers trouses. A man in a car drove by and lafed [laughed] at the lorry too. A little boy on a brike felt sorry for the lorry.’ Jan’s story (December) also alludes to complex diverse perspectives, as it starts with: ‘It was a hapy town. but one day ther was a very unhapy man.’ Recognizing that people can experience an unexpected change in emotions is displayed in Oliver’s narrative (June):

Timmy had got home from school on Friday his mum said you’re going to the shoe shop. He hates going to the shoe shop. On (saluat) Saturday he went to the shoe shop his shoe’s were very very bug [big] but they were very exspecif [expensive] […] when timmy got home he war [wore] his his shoes every ware [where]. they were black and he said to himself it wasent [wasn’t] bad going to the shoe shop.

References to emotional states emerge in the narratives to contextualize the characters’ reactions. For example, Ayla (June) wrote: ‘Samanther was so cross she shouted at him,’ and Nikki (May) explains how ‘Hanna saw her friend’s and she was so happy.’ The ability to appreciate others’ emotions is also reflected in the understanding that environments and a sequence of events influence people’s emotional states, as in Olivia’s story (December): ‘when she came back she was not happy becuos there was a chafik [traffic] jam.’ Later in the story the character ‘sat down next to the fire and had a cup of tea and was happy.’ However, emotional states can also trigger particular events as Ray’s writing in July evidences well:

(…) He went with his brother James and his sisters Jane and emily. They like the beach a lot but James dosent [doesn’t] at all. The [then] James sai I want to go home but they didn’t care about him. So he disied [decided] to go home alone so he did. When he got home the door was locked So he cried. He was on his way to the beach but he looked back fell to the side of a cliff.

Many of these illustrations show children’s understanding of how internal states are closely linked to physiological states. For example, Maria (October) explains in her story that ‘they where so worrid that they were sick’ and Nikki (December) describes how the babies in his story were crying because ‘the babies were saw cold infakt all the children were colded.’

To represent the characters’ mental states requires complex perspective-taking skills. Some compositions demonstrate how, as writers, children recognize that a story to be understood needs to be presented from the point of view of the characters in relation to time, space and even visual perspective. The complex ability to imagine a story and effectively present it from the perspective of a character is shown in Hannah’s extract (February): ‘quikly the boy looked at the place where the girl had been sitting but the girl had vanished into thin air the little boy ran away he (ass) asked everyone if they had seen nothing of her.’ Mark (March) also takes the reader through his character’s point of view of events: ‘One day a man was going to mend a house. But his tiur was flat. So he had to walk to the house but when he out there they where out. So he went back to the town then he sow [saw] there [their] car so he folood [followed] them.’

Awareness of the reader’s state of mind in children’s compositions

Finally, in terms of the children’s ability to consider others’ perspectives in the context of writing, it is relevant to consider how compositions evidence children’s awareness of the reader’s perspective, as noted in linguistic devices adopted which try to make the narratives dynamic and captivating. In the following example, Ayla (June) very effectively conveys her character’s excitement with the development of events ‘She woke up at the crack of dawn. She looked outside her bedroom window and she went crazy. It was snowing. She got dressed rushed downstairs and put on her ice boots and ran outside. Without any breakfast.’ Similarly, action and sensory impressions are emphasized to the reader in Mark’s narration (December) ‘he tried to get it but whooh the shelf stared to wobl then it came crashing down,’ and in Mathew’s effective use of onomatopoeia (February): ‘He went on the slid [slide] weeeeeee.’

Humour emerges in some compositions to directly engage the reader through a distinct perspective where elements of incongruity and surprise are effectively used, as seen in Hannah’s and Thomas’ (January) extracts below:

The mesh [messy] house

One day the Acorn family were having breckfast. This was meessyist time of the da [day]. Sometimse plates would get smashed and milk well get spilt. Sometimes even worse things would happen because the dog would spot the cat then anything could happen. This was one of thouse days oh! no. the dog has spotted the cat.’ (Hannah)

‘One day the family wher having a tee party. First they gave the cat adrink of milk. Then they made the cake but Just at that moment the oven blew up. The they tried cutting the bread but father cut his finger instead. (Thomas)

This also occurs in the characters created: ‘she saw a funy lettil Man called tumpy he looked hier.’ (Zarah, October).

A diverse range of other linguistic devices common in children’s literature was also present in some compositions, such as rhyme and, as seen in Nathan’s writing (July), rhythm through repetition: ‘On Sunday I went to the seaside. I am going to make a sand casle. It will be very big. I Will dig and dig. And we will dig for gold and play in the sea it will be fun it will. We have to go to the seaside now.’

Directly addressing the audience was evident in some of the writings as the following examples illustrate well: ‘I like the bike that is the best part I thinck what do you like best the boy the dog or maybe the car can you see that plan [plane] beacose I can’ (Raina, December) and ‘you can see him in the float in the pictuer with his sister’ (Hannah, October). Nathan (July) ends his story by telling the reader ‘Now we are going home see you soon.’

Discussion

Mastering writing requires diverse skills linked to the transcription process but also the ability to consider others’ perspectives when creating texts (Chilton et al., 2019; Hughes & Devine, 2015). Narrative writing in particular places significant demands on cognitive resources, from having to focus on vocabulary, spelling and sentence construction to the story’s plot, characters created and overall coherence, all simultaneously (Eisenberg et al., 2008, MacArthur & Graham, 2016). The present study investigates if early narrative writing in primary school encourages TOM. The results show that narrative writing supports perspective taking and understanding of what motivates people’s behaviours both through the characters children imagine but also in the consideration of the reader’s viewpoint. The data presented here challenges beliefs that it is only later in primary school years that children represent characters’ mental states in their narratives when key elements of the transcription process become more automatic and with more cognitive resources directed to composition (Bigozzi et al., 2016; Nicolopoulou, 2008).

The analysed compositions show that in the first years of primary school during the process of mastering literacy acquisition, writing constitutes a rich context for developing understanding of people’s minds, despite the transcription process having not been fully mastered. Representations of inner life were evident in many compositions particularly in relation to the stories’ protagonists’ emotional and cognitive states.

However, the present results revealed considerable variation across children within the targeted age range in terms of total TOM lexicon in their writings and variance in individual children across the academic year. This variation was significantly associated with the type of text created, an important finding which shows that not all types of texts encourage awareness of others’ mental states. In the present study, children were free to select the type of text to create which resulted in some compositions being descriptive whilst others were narratives of varied complexity. The results indicate that descriptive texts included no or very limited mental state lexicon whilst story narratives had significant references to mental states. The relationship between type of composition and TOM can in part be explained by differences in the cognitive requirements needed to describe a picture and to imagine a story inspired by a picture. To create a story, characters, and a set of events places great demands on metacognitive processes (Eisenberg et al., 2008). It is in the context of story creation that children are challenged to consider others’ perspectives (Freer et al., 2011; Hughes & Devine, 2015), as the writer must keep in mind the characters’ points of view and how the events created as part of the plot affect their reactions. The link between fiction writing and representations of mental states highlights the importance that social-cultural contexts linked to language have in fostering TOM and the dynamic interaction between these social contexts and children’s internal regulatory processes (Ochoa-Angrino et al., 2010; Zufferey, 2010).

Limitations

Methodological considerations need to be made regarding the present study in relation to adopting a ‘spontaneous’ writing task in the context of a school year. Naturalistic longitudinal data offers unique opportunities to understand individual differences and advance developmental perspectives with direct implications for practice. Spontaneous writing tasks can be more demanding for young children than retelling a story, a method used in past studies (Zanchi & Zampini, 2020), and this may be one of the reasons why it is not often adopted in the research. Eliciting narratives through the approach adopted in this study can also have significant limitations including the potential lack of contextual relevance of the task in the context of other classroom activities, affecting children’s levels of engagement with the process of writing. The fact that the writing task was presented to children as an individual process, may have detached the activity from the social writing practices in primary school (Bazerman et al., 2018), influencing the type of texts created. Children’s story creations are ‘tied to the context in which they tell stories and the purposes for which they are telling them’, making it challenging to capture authentic narratives through research (Engel, 2005, p. 210). The potential impact of an individual teaching style in children’s writings is another important limitation to be considered (Dreher, 1990).

Future research in this area also needs to consider diversity in terms of social economic factors, as this study’s sample was drawn from an Independent school.

Implications

TOM skills emerge in early childhood but continue to develop through primary school; it is important to better understand the role that written language plays in that process (Grazzani et al., 2018). Future research needs to focus on interventional approaches to assess if introducing fictional writing as part of regular classroom activities early in primary school can positively impact on levels of ToM. Learning in school contexts is significantly reliant on children’s understanding of texts and on effective communication through written language, contributing to positive academic outcomes (Gorman et al., 2011, Hughes & Devine, 2015, Williams & Larkin, 2013). Encouraging children to write fictional narratives supports the development of key linguistic and transcription skills but also important representational understandings of others’ perspectives, their thinking and their emotions.

Researchers have raised concerns about an overemphasis on transcription skills early in literacy teaching, negatively affecting children’s motivation toward reading and writing (Flynn et al., 2021, Quinn & Bingham, 2018). However, positive attitudes toward literacy can be encouraged through regular story writing practices that place more emphasis on meaningful content whilst also supporting transcription skills (Eisenber et al., 2008; Hayes & Berninger, 2010). Storytelling is important to children’s experience from a very young age. By the time children start primary school adults need to encourage narrative writing as part of social-linguistic practices (Castedo & Ferreiro, 2010), where children’s ideas and experiences are made visible and shared with others. Supporting fiction writing will not only encourage the development of composition and transcription skills (Bigozii et al., 2016; Hayes & Berninger, 2010), but also the ability to consider others’ perspectives, empowering children as writers.

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Wolfgang Mann for his comments and suggestions.

Data availability

Anonymized raw data can be made available on request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sofia Guimaraes

Dr Sofia Guimaraes is a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies and a member of the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Human Development at the University of Roehampton. Her research is focused on language (including multilingualism), literacy and cognitive development as well as children's wellbeing, development and learning.