effectiveness of story-based play therapy intervention on response inhibition and emotion regulation in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of story-based play therapy intervention on response inhibition and emotion regulation in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The research design was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of this research included all 9-12-year-old children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in Tehran in 2022. The sample size includes 30 people (15 people in the experimental group and 15 people in the control group) from the statistical population were selected by the available sampling method and were divided into two control and experimental groups. For the experimental group, 8 60-minute story-based play therapy sessions were conducted. In this research, the Child Behavior Rating Scale (Swanson et al, 1980, CBRS), Moon and Sun Stroop Test (Archibald & Kerns, 1990, SMST), and the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shield and Kiketi, 1998, ERC) were used to collect data. Multivariate analysis of the covariance test was used to analyze the obtained data statistically. The findings showed that by controlling the effect of the pre-test, there was a significant difference between the post-test of the experimental and control groups in response inhibition and emotion regulation (P<0.01). According to the results of this study, it can be concluded that story-based play therapy improves response inhibition and emotion regulation in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.