Non-therapeutic play to overcome negative emotional symptoms and improve emotional intelligence in children aged 3-7: a systematic review

Alexander N Veraksa ^* Valeriya Plotnikova ^* Vera Sukhikh Dmitry S Kornienko Natalia A Rudnova

• Federal Scientific Center of Psychological and Multidisciplinary Research, Moscow, Moscow Oblast, Russia

Play therapy is an effective approach to reduce emotional symptoms, stress and develop emotional sphere in early childhood. But the organization of therapy requires long-term specialized training and a significant number of sessions, making it inaccessible in public institutions. This systematic review aims to analyze the potential and mechanisms of play outside of the therapeutic setting for overcoming emotional symptoms, develop emotional regulation and resilience in preschool-aged children. Using the PRISMA method, we selected 33 articles for qualitative analysis from the 9,639 published articles over the past five years found through PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Scopus. The effectiveness of pretend play, play with rules, digital play, and outdoor play for addressing emotional symptoms and improving mental health was revealed. It was shown that play outside of the therapeutic setting is widely used to improve emotional intelligence and its components, decrease anxiety, aggression, and fear. In accordance with the cultural-historical approach, seven generalized blocks of play mechanisms were identified to enhance children's mental well-being and promote development. Pretend play was found to have the greatest corrective and developmental potential, due to the diverse mechanisms involved. The findings of this review may be used to plan future research and improve educational practice in public kindergartens. children, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in society (Khakimzyanov & Ryazanov, 2022). Children experience psychological impacts of stressful eventsemotional reactions associated with the assessment and experience of what is happening. The experiences that children undergo in stressful events hinder the satisfaction of their basic needs for safety, predictability, connectedness, and development (Bowlby, 1979). Therefore, the emotional sphere is, on the one hand, the most sensitive to stressful events, and on the other, it is the main protective source, which emphasizes the non-direct environmental influences on child development and reactions. Environmental factors affect child development by the principle of refraction rather than by the principle of reflection: any environmental condition is refracted in a child's mind in unique ways depending on his or her actual abilities and personal attitude to the situation (Gavrilova, 2025;Veresov, 2017).