Las habilidades sociales como recursos para el desarrollo de fortalezas en la infancia

Abstract

A strong relationship between social competence during childhood and the subsequent psychological functioning has been found. Therefore, learning and practising social skills contribute to the development of psychological strengths in children. The aims of this paper were a) to describe a series of social skills in pre-school children from San Miguel de Tucuman (Argentina) who live under poverty conditions, and b) to identify if the presence of social skills reduces the frequency of occurrence of disruptive behaviour. We worked with a sample of 120 5- year olds from outskirts of San Miguel de Tucuman who attend public schools kindergartens. In the research their parents were administered the Scale of Social Skills (Lacunza, 2005), the Guide for Behaviour Observation (Ison & Fachinelli, 1993) and a sociodemographic survey. The results showed significant statistical differences in the social skills according to the gender and in the dimensions of physical and/or verbal aggression and transgression in the behavioural scale. Children with disruptive behaviour showed fewer social skills, according to their parents’ perception. These results show that social skills in children prevent the occurrence of dysfunctional behaviour, particularly aggressiveness and negativism. These data show that the practice of social behaviour contributes to adaptation, acceptance of others, positive reinforcement, well-being, among other salugenic resources.