The influence of a social skills program on children's social behaviour, affective perspective-taking, and empathy skills

Social skills are vital to children's healthy development as they provide them with tools to deal with their everyday life issues. The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of teaching the value of social skills to young children as a way to enhance their prosocial behaviour and increase their affective perspective-taking abilities and empathy skills. Particularly, through this intervention the children were encouraged to understand the value of learning prosocial behaviour. An eight week workshop was implemented in an afterschool program offering children an opportunity to understand the importance of adopting prosocial behaviour in their day to day relationships. Educator reports showed an improvement in children's engagement in positive behaviour and social interaction in the classroom setting after their participation in the workshop. Observations of the children's behaviour during the workshop sessions did not show any significant differences. In addition, children's perceptions of affective perspective-taking, empathy and social skills seemed to change at the end of the intervention. Implications for working with children and recommendations for future research are discussed.;Keywords: social skills; ethical values; prosocial behaviour; affective perspective-taking; empathy; emotion knowledge...