The Effectiveness of Play Therapy based on Cognitive - Behavioral Therapy on Social Adjustment of preschool children

Aims: Promoting social adjustment can improve the developmental skills of preschool children. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of play therapy based on cognitive-behavioral on social adjustment of preschool children. Instrument & Methods: The quasi-experimental research method was pretest and posttest with a control group with a follow-up period. The statistical population included all preschool children (5 to 6 years) in Bojnourd in the academic year 2019-2020 that 40 people were selected by convenience sampling method and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent cognitive-behavioral play therapy training in 12 sessions of 90 minutes; but the control group did not receive any training. The social adjustment questionnaire was administered to the subjects before and after the training. Data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance test at the significance level of 0.05 with SPSS software version 24. Findings: The results showed that play therapy based on cognitive-behavioral was effective in improving social adjustment of preschool children (p<0.05). And the results continued in the follow-up period (p<0.05). Conclusion: Teaching play therapy based on cognitive-behavioral to preschool children can be an effective step in promoting their social adjustment.