An evaluation of the effectiveness of sharing and cooperation enhancement program for preschool children

The purpose of this study, develop a program to improve helping, sharing and comforting behaviors of children aged 4 to 5 and evaluate this program's effectiveness. Also, the effects' of social information processing and emotional recognition skills on children's prosocial behavior were examined. For this reason, Play-Based Social Enhancement Program has been developed to increase children's prosocial behaviors. This program consists of six modules, was implemented for three weeks. Total of 96 children aging between 32-64 month participated in this study. As 57 of 96 participants composed the experimental group the rest children composed the control group. As for measuring prosocial behavior, parents' and teachers' reports on questionnaires were used and children evaluated with individual assessment different tasks. Pretest-posttest control group designed has been used in this study. The results show that the social skills enhancement program produces statistically meaningful difference both in measures taken from children's assessment and in parent and teacher reports. It has been revealed that children in the experimental group have increased helping, sharing and comforting behaviors, emotional comprehension skills and quiet responses in a negative situation. Similar to children's assessment, parent's and teacher's reports show that experimental group scores were observed to be statistically significantly higher than the control group. Measures taken from children are consistent with measures taken from parents and teachers. Therefore these results demonstrate that the social skills enhancement program improves prosocial behaviors and cognitive skills of preschool children. The study also examined whether prosocial behaviors and cognitive skills of children are related to demographic characteristics. Results showed that gender, age, having a sibling, and maternal education level were the most influential variables on prosocial behaviors and cognitive skills.