The doctoral thesis titled "The Effect of Mother-Child Communication Skills Training on Children's Emotion Recognition and Expression Skills," presented by Gülay Temiz to the Selçuk University Institute of Social Sciences in 2014, comprehensively addresses the relationship between mother-child communication and the child's emotional development. This study investigates the extent to which communication training provided to mothers during early childhood affects children's ability to recognize and express their emotions. The thesis emphasizes the need for this subject and points out the importance of maternal training programs.

In the study, a pretest-posttest control group experimental design was used. A total of 68 mothers with 6-year-old children and their children in a kindergarten in Konya were assigned to experimental (34 mother-child) and control (34 mother-child) groups. Within the scope of the research, while the "Parent-Child Communication Assessment Tool (ABÇİDA)" was used to evaluate mothers' communication skills, the "Emotion Recognition Test" and "Emotion Expression Test" were applied for children's emotional skills. A three-hour "Mother-Child Communication Skills Training" program was administered to the mothers in the experimental group two days a week for 15 weeks.

According to the research findings, there is no significant difference between the communication skills of the experimental and control group mothers before the training program. However, after the training, the posttest mean scores of the experimental group mothers' speaking, listening, message, non-verbal communication, and empathy skills were found to be significantly higher than their pretest scores. This indicates that the training program is effective in improving mothers' communication skills. Furthermore, the posttest mean scores of the emotion recognition and expression skills of the children whose mothers received the training program also showed a significant increase compared to their pretest scores. In the follow-up test conducted eight weeks later, it was observed that the gains in both mothers' communication skills (message, non-verbal communication, empathy) and children's emotional skills were permanent.

These results reveal that the communication skills training provided to mothers not only increases the level of communication with their children but also supports the development of children's emotional awareness and expression skills. It is observed that healthy communication established especially during early childhood leaves permanent positive effects on the social and emotional development of children. These findings emphasize once again the importance of expanding family training programs and encouraging family involvement in preschool education.

We thank the author Gülay Temiz for this valuable study. The full thesis can be accessed via www.tez.yok.gov.tr using the code 377779.