The Effect of Emotional Intelligence Training (EIT) on the Social Competence in Adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Abstract

Perceived social competence is one of the effective factors in improvement of self-esteem and self-efficacy in the adolescents affected by psychological disorders. The present study aims to investigate the effect of Emotional Intelligence Training (EIT) on social competence (SC) in the adolescents affected by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study is a quasi-experimental research with pretest-posttest design and control group. The population includes all the adolescents of 13-17 years who have referred to psychological treatment centers. The samples were selected by convenience sampling and one of the treatment centers was chosen to perform the study. Among the 135 adolescents receiving the ADHD diagnosis, 40 adolescents were assigned to two 20-people groups including the experimental and control groups by simple random sampling. Finally, the subjects of the experimental group received EIT for eight 45-min sessions. Data collection was done by Social Competence Questionnaire (SCQ, Prandin; 2006) that was filled by the subjects. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS-23. According to the findings, EIT has improved the components of social competence in the adolescents affected by ADHD (P˂0.01). The findings suggest that EIT provides the capacity of recognizing one’s own and others’ emotions and how to regulate and express them. So, it can be effective in social competence of the adolescents affected by ADHD.