The team examined the extent to which different non-human characters influence youngsters' theory of mind skills, which include the ability to read and predict social changes in the environment through tone of voice, choice of words or facial expression.
Researchers from the University of Plymouth's School of Psychology tested more than 100 children aged between five and 10 when presented with stories featuring animal characters as opposed to those featuring human ones.
Effective
They found that when faced with human characters, there was a "clear" age-related progression with older children consistently outperforming younger counterparts.
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