Using wordless picture books to assess gender variations in social imagination among preschool children

This study explores how wordless picture book activities can be used to assess the development of social imagination in typically developing preschoolers, including an examination of potential gender differences within a culturally informed framework. As children engage in narrative storytelling, their ability to attribute thoughts and feelings to characters offers a window into how they interpret emotional experiences. Using an integrated qualitative-to-quantitative analysis approach, the study introduces the TFI Analysis Framework to systematically capture and analyze children's narrative responses during wordless storytelling sessions. A total of 34 preschoolers participated, and their responses were observed and interpreted as indicators of their social imagination using the TFI Analysis Framework. A key focus of this study is the exploration of gender differences in social imagination. Despite long-standing assumptions that boys and girls may develop social-cognitive skills differently, analyses revealed no significant gender-based differences across TFI domains. This finding suggests that the foundations of social imagination are similarly accessible to preschool boys and girls, offering important evidence that gender is not a determining factor in early social-cognitive development. In multicultural settings, where traditional values intersect with rapid digital and social change, young children's narratives provide meaningful insight into how they navigate evolving social expectations. The gender-neutral patterns observed further support the TFI Analysis Framework as an equitable assessment tool, demonstrating that its coding and scoring processes capture children's social imagination without gender bias. These findings highlight the potential of culturally grounded, narrative-based assessments to support early identification of social-cognitive development patterns.