The Effect of Play Therapy on Psychological Adjustment, Effective Communication with Others and Individual Abilities of Preschool Children

Background & Aims: One of the most important skills in preschool is social skills. In other words, social skills are concerned with empathy, self-efficacy, responsibility and social interaction, psychological adjustment, effective communication with others, and individual abilities. It is very important to learn social skills in childhood. By strengthening social skills in this period, we can see the strengthening of educational status, communication and language and verbal skills of children. Gersham et al. (2011) consider the dimensions of social skills including empathy, cooperation and interaction, assertiveness and self-control and psychological adjustment, effective communication with others, and individual abilities. Lynch and Simpson (2010) also identified important elements of social skills including empathy, participation in group activities, helping each other, communicating with others, and problem solving. One of the effective factors on strengthening children's social skills is play. Maria Montessori (1909) considers play to be a great school in which the child is educated and his physical, mental and social strength develops and he is prepared to live in any way. Below the game, there are 3 educational games. Educational game includes a set of organized educational activities in the form of individual and group games that pursue a specific educational goal. During games, children gain access to new mental concepts and acquire more and better skills. With the help of the game, they get acquainted with different colors, different shapes and different directions and gain valuable experiences. During the game, the learning materials are learned without pressure and with desire. The purpose of the present research was to determine the impact of educational games on the development of social skills on the preschool children in the city of Tehran. Regarding the necessity of the present issue, it can be said that research on the effect of play therapy on children with behavioral disorders shows a positive effect and improvement of children's skills problems and is used in almost all diagnostic classes. Research conducted in Iran on the effect of play therapy on maladapted children shows positive results. But special research in preschool is relatively small and has created a research gap. Therefore, conducting the present study on preschool children seems to be able to add to the existing set of knowledge. According to the above, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of therapeutic games on mental adjustment, effective communication with others and individual abilities of preschool children in Tehran. Methods: The present study was an applied research in terms of purpose and a semi-experimental study of pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population includes all preschool children of the district 6 of the city of Tehran in the school year of 2018-2019, among which 30 students were selected through purposive and random sampling (n=30). The students were divided into 2 groups of 15, i.e. a control group and an experimental group (n=15 in each). The data were collected through the Social Skills Questionnaire by Akers (1992). The participants in the experimental group received a package of educational games for 10 sessions and 25 minutes per session. The control group received no games. The data were analyzed through the analysis of multi-variable covariance using SPSS24 software. Results: The results of the covariance analysis test indicated that in these two groups, i.e. control and experimental, there were significant relationship among the variables of the effective communication (P<0.001, F=134.2), cooperation (P<0.001, F=69.8), individual abilities (P<0.001, F=159.4). Besides, the control variable (pre-test) had a significant impact on all four variables. Conclusion: it can be concluded that the educational games can have a positive impact on developing social skills of the preschool children. Therefore, in the education program of this age group this issue must be taking into consideration by the planning authorities in the macrolevel and by the teachers in the micro level. As shown, educational games have a significant effect on mental adjustment, effective communication with others and individual abilities of preschool children; However, in terms of the generalizability of the results, the present study has limitations such as limited educational sessions and differences in the family, economic and social problems of the subjects, lack of control over some intervening variables, lack of confidence in the use of all instructional methods. Therefore, it is suggested that other studies be conducted in the provinces of the country to get a clearer picture of the use of educational games in psychological adjustment, effective communication with others and individual abilities. The present study focused on the preschool level and the effect of using educational games on learning different subjects and the skills and social development of primary school students should be studied in other elementary grades.