Effect of play therapy on reduction of social anxiety and increasing social skills in preschool children in Omidiyeh

Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate play therapy on social skills and social anxiety in preschool children. Methodology: The methodology of this study was experimental with a pretest‑posttest in case and control groups. The statistical population consists of all preschool children. The subjectsincluded 15 persons in the control group and 15 persons in the case group. Multistage cluster samplingmethod is a kind of method in which samples are randomly selected and assigned to two groups. First of all, the samples respond to children anxiety inventory made by Spence et al. (2001) and checklist ofsocial skills by Yazdkhasti and then the intervention of play therapy was performed in the case groupduring ten sessions and every session lasted 45 min. Finally, two groups were tested and covarianceanalysis was used to analyze the data. The statistical analysis shows that there is significant difference in posttest. Result: The results indicated that play therapy could be effective in reduction of anxietyand improvement of three subscales of social skills including, group following, participation in groupand non verbal skills. However, play therapy did not change the feeling perception and partner search. Conclusion: The findings imply that play therapy can be helpful in solving the problems related to social anxiety and social skill disorders and hence improve the engaged subjects’ social skills and reduce their social anxiety.

کلیدواژه ها:

Play therapy ، preschool children ، social anxiety ، social skills