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Children become more likely to put story characters’ thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and desires into words as they grow older, with substantial development during the primary-school years. A large 2026 study also found that children used more of this language when retelling a story than when creating one from pictures alone.
What the study measured
Gagarina and colleagues analyzed 5,507 picture-based narratives from 2,763 typically developing children aged 3–13 across 32 countries and 44 languages. The children completed tasks using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), a tool for eliciting fictional stories. Researchers transcribed the narratives and coded internal state terms (ISTs): words or expressions that make a character’s inner state explicit.
ISTs include words such as “happy,” “hungry,” “think,” and “want,” as well as longer expressions. They describe what a character says in a story—not the child’s private thoughts or feelings, which the task did not measure. The study appeared in Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools in 2026. Read the journal article.
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What helped children express characters’ inner states?
Age was associated with more internal-state language
Older children were more likely to use ISTs in their narratives, with substantial development during the primary-school years. This is a group-level pattern, not a fixed timetable for every child.
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Retelling elicited more than telling from pictures
Children were more likely to use ISTs when retelling a story than when telling one from pictures alone. The authors suggest that hearing a story first may give children a model of how internal states can be expressed. The study compared narrative tasks; it did not test whether teaching children to retell stories causes lasting language gains.
Story length mattered more for younger children
Among younger children, longer narratives predicted greater IST production. The association was not found among older children. This does not establish that simply encouraging a child to produce a longer story will cause more sophisticated use of internal-state language.
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How children used internal-state terms in story structure
Children were more likely to mention internal states as initiating events—for example, a character wanting something—than as reactions to events. The paper also examined four MAIN stories: Cat, Dog, Baby Birds, and Baby Goats. The reported pattern concerns how children expressed story elements, not how strongly they felt or understood an emotion.
Were bilingual children different from monolingual children?
In the study’s modeled likelihood of producing ISTs relevant to story macrostructure, researchers found no difference between monolingual and bilingual children. They also found no difference between bilingual children’s first and second languages. These are group-level results; they do not mean an individual bilingual child will use the same vocabulary or perform identically in both languages.
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The authors note that objective language-proficiency measures were not available for all participants. Differences in proficiency could help explain why the study did not detect an L1–L2 difference. The findings therefore should not be read as proof that proficiency never affects how a child tells a story.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the findings mean for assessment—and what they do not show
The results support retelling with MAIN as a useful way to assess children’s ability to verbalize characters’ internal states. MAIN is designed to provide comparable fictional narrative tasks across languages and language settings. A research summary published by GWZ on October 8, 2026, describes the instrument as freely available; check the GWZ summary and current official MAIN materials for access and licensing terms before using it.
The study involved typically developing children completing structured narrative tasks. It does not establish a universal developmental timetable, show that retelling instruction or a particular therapy causes broader language gains, or demonstrate effects on empathy or theory of mind. The authors identify research involving children with developmental disorders and intervention applications as future directions.
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