The effectiveness of a selected movement program with structured, unstructured, and mixed on the social and psychological development of children aged 4 to 6 years

Play is one of the methods for teaching the necessary movement, emotional and social skills, and structured play is the basis for children's normal communication and learning processes.

The purpose of this study was the effectiveness of a selected movement program of structured, unstructured, and mixed on the social and psychological development of children aged 4-6 years.

The present research method was semi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design. The statistical population included children aged 4-6 years in district-5 of Tehran in 2020. The statistical sample included 60 children who were randomly selected and divided into three groups of 20 children. The studied groups trained for 12-weeks according to their implementation protocol, two session’s per-week and one-hour per-session. The research groups completed Vineland Social Development Questionnaire (1989) and Children Psychological Development (2010) before and after the intervention. A mixed ANOVA and Bonferroni post-hoc tests were used to analyze the data. All statistical analyzes were performed using SPSS version-26 software.

The results showed that for social and psychological development, the main effect of levels and the interactive effect of group levels were significant (P<0.05), but the main effect of group was not significant (P>0.05). The results of the Bonferroni post hoc test showed that there was a significant difference between the mixed and structured groups (P<0.05), but no significant difference between the unstructured and structured groups and between the mixed and unstructured groups (P>0.05).

Based on the results indicating the effectiveness of the mixed exercises on psychological and social development, it is suggested that professionals and physical education teachers use these protocols to improve and promote these skills.