This study addressed a puzzling discrepancy in existing research about when children achieve and manifest a mentalistic conception of the person. Narrative research suggests that children do not represent characters as mental agents until middle childhood, whereas social cognition research places this understanding at around 4 years. Using a theoretically informed typology, 617 stories were analyzed composed by 30 children participating in a storytelling and story-acting practice integrated into their preschool curriculum. Results indicated that children's representation of characters shifted from almost exclusively physical and external portrayals of "actors" at 3 to increasing inclusion of "agents" with rudimentary mental states at 4 and of "persons" with mental representational capacities by 5. The developmental trajectories of boys and girls differed somewhat.

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A B S T R AC T This study analyzed 328 single-and group-authored stories composed by nine 4-year-olds in a mixed-age preschool class participating in a peer-oriented storytelling and story-acting practice. Group-authored stories (33 percent) were overwhelmingly told by same-gender groups. The frequencies, developmental trajectories, and functions of group-authored stories were different for girls and boys. Girls told mostly group-authored stories in the fall and single-authored stories in the spring. Group-authoring provided 'brain-storming sessions' for narrative experimentation; these stories were longer, with more dramatic problems and more sophisticated character portrayals. By the spring, girls' single-authored stories also included these features, suggesting internalized narrative gains. Boys consistently preferred single-authored stories, though in the spring the frequency and quality of their group-authored stories increased. These were longer, with more sophisticated character portrayals, than single-authored stories. Group-authored stories made a distinctive contribution to narrative development, partly by helping boys and girls overcome limitations of their preferred narrative genres.The ability to tell well-formed, coherent, and interesting narratives develops in and through social practices. The role of parents and teachers in supporting narrative development has been well documented. Adults can facilitate and enhance young children's narrative efforts by inviting them to recount events and retell fictional stories, providing topics, questioning them about past events and their attitudes toward them, elaborating children's responses, and modeling 'tellable' stories (Downloaded from Once upon a time there was a kingdom with a princess, a queen, a king, and a prince. And there was a dog. The princess, the queen and the king had a unicorn and a pony. They went for a walk and they saw a bear, a unicorn, and a pony. They went to the