Analyzing the Relationships between Preschool Children's Play Skills and Their Social Competence and Emotion Regulation Skills

Abstract

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 (Degirmenci, 2016), Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation-Preschool Edition, Short Form (Corapci, Aksan, Arslan-Yalcin & Yagmurlu, 2010) and Emotion Regulation Checklist (Batum & Yagmurlu, 2007). This study was designed as 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 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.