Effect of play therapy on reduction of social anxiety and increasing social skills in preschoolchildren in Omidiyeh

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate play therapy on social skills and social anxiety in preschool children. Methodology: The methodology of this study was experimental with a pretest-posttest in case and control groups. The statistical population consists of all preschool children. The subjects included 15 persons in the control group and 15 persons in the case group. Multistage cluster sampling method is a kind of method in which samples are randomly selected and assigned to two groups. First of all, the samples respond to children anxiety inventory made by Spence et al. (2001) and checklist of social skills by Yazdkhasti and then the intervention of play therapy was performed in the case group during ten sessions and every session lasted 45 min. Finally, two groups were tested and covariance analysis was used to analyze the data. The statistical analysis shows that there is significant difference in posttest. Result: The results indicated that play therapy could be effective in reduction of anxiety and improvement of three subscales of social skills including, group following, participation in group and non verbal skills. However, play therapy did not change the feeling perception and partner search. Conclusion: The findings imply that play therapy can be helpful in solving the problems related to social anxiety and social skill disorders and hence improve the engaged subjects' social skills and reduce their social anxiety.