Abstract:
In view of the probably increasing number of behavioral disorders in kindergarten and (pre-)school children and the empiricism at hand about social competence trainings, a new, preventive and environment-integrated intervention shall be introduced and evaluated. This approach is distinct by association of cognitive behavioral elements of traditional social skills trainings with the basic principles of a child-centered approach. In order to impersonate and solve social conflicts, symbolic fairy tales and puppet play will be utilized. Furthermore, encouragement of empathy, recognition and expression of emotions, and pro-social values will be emphasized. An attempt was made to overcome the shortcomings of common trainings with respect to generalization by a variety of transfer techniques. Conflicts in everyday kindergarten situations will be solved by signal cards and token reinforcement.
The study consisted of three parts of mostly quasi-experimental design. Altogether, 81 children of both genders (53 to 81 months) from 5 kindergarten facilities took part in the study. The children were divided into 9 treatment and 6 control groups. Because of its outcome, the intervention was optimized several times. The result is an eight-week long training curriculum with substantial transfer techniques that can be integrated on a daily basis. The training curriculum can be conducted by qualified psychologists and kindergarten teachers. The effects of the intervention were objectivized by means of questionnaires (parents, teachers, children), sociometric assessment techniques, and direct behavioral observation. Collecting and evaluating of data was carried out by students who were uninvolved with the training as well as the teachers and trainers. For the most part, the study achieved significant training effects. Generalization across settings and behaviors could be sucessfully proven, however, generalization across time could not be proven in a sufficient manner.
A longer lasting execution of the training, the embedding of the training into additional socio-emotional interventions, and increased execution of the developed transfer techniques is recommended, in order to achieve improved maintenance over time.