Analyzing the Relationshipsbetween Preschool Children’sPlay Skills and Their SocialCompetence and EmotionRegulation Skills


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Uyanık G., Arslan Çiftçi H., Ünsal F. Ö., Kılıç Z., Değirmenci Ş.

Croatian Journal of Education-Hrvatski Casopis za Odgoj i obrazovanje, cilt.20, sa.3, ss.243-2570, 2018 (SSCI)

Özet

Developing effective social and emotional skills is an important aspect of development in all children, and children’s play skills are in constant interaction with their social and emotional competence. The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between preschool children’s play skills and their social competence and emotion regulation skills. Tools used in this study are Revised Knox Preschool Play Scale (Değirmenci, 2016), Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation-Preschool Edition, Short Form (Çorapçı, Aksan, Arslan-Yalçın & Yağmurlu, 2010) and Emotion Regulation Checklist (Batum & Yağmurlu, 2007). This study was designed as a relational survey model. The research was carried out with 131 preschool children aged 48-72 months who continued their education in public and private preschool institutions of the Ministry of National Education in Istanbul during the 2016-2017 school year. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation was conducted for data analysis. Results have shown that preschool children’s Revised Knox Preschool Play Scale total scores have a significant positive correlation with “Social Competence” sub-dimension scores of Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (r= .179; p<.05) and a significant negative correlation with “Anxiety-Withdrawal” sub-dimension scores (r= -.416; p<.01). It was also found that Revised Knox Preschool Play Scale total scores have a significant positive correlation with “Emotion Regulation” sub-dimension scores of Emotion Regulation Checklist (r= .491; p<.01) and a significant negative correlation with “Lability/Negativity” sub-dimension scores (r= -.190; p<.05). In light of these findings, it can be said that as play skills of preschool children increase, their social competence and emotion regulation skills also increase; on the other hand, their levels of anxiety-withdrawal and lability-negativity decrease.