Effectiveness of combined purposeful play therapy and narrative therapy on pre-school children's attention and concentration

According to some studies, play therapy and story-telling affect on children’s attention and concentration so the purpose of the present study aimed to assess the effect of combination of purposeful play therapy and narrative therapy on attention and concentration of preschool children in a nonclinical sample. The statistical community of the clinical trial with pre-test, post-test design is all pre-school children of region 2 in Mashhad. Four kindergartens were selected through multi cluster sampling method and 60 children with IQ score in range of 90-119 (6-6.5 years old girls and boys) were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned to 4 groups (10 persons) play therapy, narrative therapy, combined purposeful play therapy and narrative therapy and control group. The research instruments were Wechsler IQ test, test of every day attention for children and continuous performance test. Experimental groups received 12 sessions of interventions and the control group did not receive any treatment. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multi variable analysis of covariance. Children's attention increased significantly more in combined play therapy and narrative therapy group than the other groups (P=0.004). However, children's concentration did not increase significantly more than other groups in the combined play therapy and narrative therapy group (P=0.31). According to the results, purposeful play therapy and narrative therapy as attractive and educational tools can promote attention factors and prevent to attention defects among children.