Abstract:

The purpose of this research was to examine whether social problem solving skills of 60-72 months old children differentiate, or not according to their emotion understanding skills and demographic characteristics (gender, age, number of siblings, and period of attending preschool education institution). The research was organized in causal-comparative model. The population of the study was comprised of 60-72 months old children attending to state and private kindergartens in central provinces (Selcuklu, Meram and Karatay) of Konya, in 2011-2012 academic years. The sampling consisted of 350 children showing regular development and attending to 5 state and 5 private kindergartens, selected by random sampling method from these kindergartens. "Denham's Affect Knowledge Test" and "Wally Social Prob-lem Solving Test" were used to determine children's emotion understanding skills and social problem solving skills in the study, respectively. Children's social problem solving skills were analyzed using "t test" and "F test" to see if it differentiated according to variables such as, emotion understanding skills , age, gender, number of siblings, and period of attending preschool education institution. For data analysis, the SPSS 15.0 packet program was used. At the end of the research, social problem solving skills of children was found to differentiate according to emotion understanding skills, age, number of siblings and periods of attending preschool educational institution. However, social problem solving skills of children were not determined to differentiate according to gender variable.

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