Effectiveness of emotional intelligence training on cognitive, behavioral, emotional and motivational skills of adolescents with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

This study was aimed to investigate the effectiveness of emotional intelligence training on the cognitive, behavioral, emotional and motivational skills of adolescents with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The present research was a semi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test design and a control group. Participants in this study were 30 girl adolescents with ADHD aged 13 to15 years old. Subjects were selected by convenient sampling method and divided into experiment and control groups randomly, each of which was consisted of 15 adolescents. Experiment group received emotional intelligence training in 12 sessions each lasting for 50 minutes, but control group did not. The tools used in present research were Felner, Lease and Philips Social Self-Competence Questionnaire (SCQ). Data were analyzed by MACNOVA using SPSS software. The results of MACNOVA on the difference mean of pre-test, post-test scores showed that experiment and control groups had significant differences at least in one of the sub-scales of the cognitive, behavioral, emotional or motivational skills. The final results showed that emotional intelligence training had significant and positive effect on all sub-scales (P<0/0001). Emotional intelligence training had significant effect on the cognitive, behavioral, emotional and motivational skills on the adolescents with ADHD. Since enhancement of these skills can lead to social self-competence of this adolescents, planning for emotional intelligence training is of particular importance for them.