The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between teacher ratings of preschoolers' social skills and their level of competence in perspective taking, regulation of emotion, and interpersonal problem solving. The participants were 84 preschool children whose ages ranged from 3 to 5 years. The experiment was conducted individually using puppets. The results indicated that the developmental changes in the three areas of competence being studied were consistent with the findings of previous studies. We also found that children's regulation of emotion was related to perspective taking and interpersonal problem solving. Furthermore, the level of competence in interpersonal problem solving predicted teacher ratings of children's social skills. These results suggested that regulation of emotion and interpersonal problem solving are important elements of effective social skills training.
