The Effect of Social Skills Training on Social Skills in Early Childhood, the Relationship between Social Skills and Temperament

Abstract

The effect of Social Skills Training Programs on the social skills of pre-school children and the relationship between their social skills and temperament were investigated in this research. The subjects of the study were the children who are still in the pre-school education of public institutions. The study is conducted with the pretest-posttest control group design. 26 preschool children were included for the experimental group and 29 of them are included for the control group; there were 55 participants in total. The age of the children is between 57 and 66 months (=60,6). The children in the experimental group were applied Social Skills Training Program three times a week (8 weeks, 24 days) approximately for one hour in June and August 2015 addition to preschool educational programs while the children in the control group continues with the preschool educational program implemented in their schools. The data was gathered using “Denver II Developmental Screening Test”, “Data Collection Form”, “Social Skills Scale” and “Child Behavior Questionnaire”. The data was analyzed using “Split Plot Anova Technique” and “Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis”. Results of the research showed that the mean post-test scores of the children who participate to Social Skills Training Program are higher than the mean post-test scores of the control group children’s scores; as a result the positive effect of the implemented training was observed. It was observed that there is a significant negative correlation between social skills-timidity and temperament-inhibitory control scores; social skills-communication and temperament-activity level scores; temperament-impulsivity and social skills-discord and social skills scores.