A new study performed at Duke University examined how intervention for children at high risk of developing behavior problems can help them avoid issues later in life. The longitudinal study has found that teaching soft skills could be the key to preventing delinquent and criminal problems later in life.
Among soft skills are included and social skills and self-control. They are considered attitudes, personality traits and motivations that are not usually included in traditional measures of intelligence.
The study has been published in the journal Child Development. Researchers analyzed the effects of an intervention program developed in the 1990s, called Fast Track. The program has been developed for children identified by their parents and teachers to be at high risk of developing serious behavioral and aggressive problems.
Researchers screened a group of 9,495 children, assessing those students who scored highest in behavioral problems as reported by their parents and teachers. A number of 446 were randomly assigned to a control group and 445 children were selected and assigned to the intervention. Around 70 percent of children were male and half the children were African American. Almost 30 percent of children had parents with less than a high school education and around 60 percent of children lived in single-parent households.
The intervention program featured in elementary school a teacher-led curriculum with the goal of helping children develop self-control, social understanding, and emotional concepts. The program also focused on training parents behavioral management skills and promoting positive family-school relationships.
According to one of the authors of the study, Kenneth Dodge, Director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University and Professor of Public Policy, cited by Science Daily, the program focuses on teaching children how to respond to social situations, solve problems, and control their emotions. The professor added that the study has also found that "academic tutoring proved less valuable in the long term."
