Improving Peer Communication in Young Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects a brief series of lessons teaching communication skills would have on preschool children’s ability to communicate with one another. This study utilized a one-group pre-test, post-test design. Expressive and receptive communication skills were assessed before and after the lessons using a game in which participants were required to describe familiar objects and listen to the descriptions to draw and guess what they were. Participants were twelve Caucasian preschool children between the ages of four and six years old who attended an orthodox Jewish day school. The null hypothesis was retained as the results indicated that there was no statistically significant increase in the children’s ability to communicate with one another after receiving explicit communication training. Recommendations for future research include using alternative assessments which omit the drawing aspect of the task used in this study, having a longer time to teach communication skills, and using a larger and more diverse sample in the experimental design in order to control for the effect of age and other demographic variables on the outcomes of the lessons.