At age 3, children may:
- be preoccupied with "good" and "bad" behavior and expect happy story outcomes
- seek comfort and reassurance through stories
- prefer stories with simple plots and no digressions
At age 4, children may:
- be attracted to separation/reunion stories
- prefer stories about forgiveness for transgressions
- recognize the basic emotions in story characters: mad, sad, and glad
- have a growing appreciation of incongruity due to a better grasp of real and pretend
- invent stories that are action-packed chains of events with little unifying theme
At age 5, children may:
- begin, with guidance, to consider underlying reasons for a character's behavior
- be better able to recognize more subtle emotions in characters (for example, disappointment, confusion, frustration, embarrassment, and panic), even though they may not have the vocabulary for them
- gradually realize that a character's actions and intentions could be contradictory
- respond to stories that show triumph over adversity