Preventing preschoolers' social skill deficits through a child training program

Social skills gained in the preschool period affect important areas like peer relations, school success, and mental health in later years. Impact research on social skills training programs in Turkey is limited in terms of sample size and assessment tools. This study aimed to develop a researcher-led social skills training program for preschoolers and examine its effects on children's social competence, social and emotion understanding skills, social problem solving and play behaviors. In this randomized control, pretest-posttest study, preschools from Bakırköy municipality schools were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Intervention group received a 12-week program, which consisted of weekly, 40-minute researcher-led classroom sessions between February and May 2017. A total of 181 children (61 control, 120 intervention) whose ages ranged from 46 to 74 months, their mothers and teachers participated in the study. Before and after the program implementation, mothers and teachers completed behavior rating scales, and children were administered individual tests to obtain data on their social and emotional competence. Children in the intervention group were also observed in free play time. Results revealed that children in the intervention group showed more increase in social competence and prosocial responses to peer provocation between pre- and post-test compared to children in the control group. A downward trend in aggressive problem solutions was also observed in intervention group. Unexpectedly, intervention children showed more increase in anger-aggression scores between pre- and post-test compared to control group. Results have been discussed with respect to program content, delivery method and assessment tools along with study limitations.