Washington, March 8 (IANS) Children who were taught skills to tone down anger and other emotions perked up their classroom behaviour, cutting down on disciplinary referrals and suspensions, says a study.

The findings by the University of Rochester Medical Centre (URMC) researchers says that school children in a mentoring programme were about half as likely to have any discipline related incident over the three-month period of the study.

They also had a 43 percent decrease in mean suspensions as compared to the control group which did not receive mentoring of the self-control skills.

Children taught the new skills also had a 46 percent decrease in mean office disciplinary referrals as compared to the children in the study's control group.

'This study suggests that with appropriate guidance, young children are capable of learning a great deal about their emotions and skills for handling their emotions effectively and those skills can have direct, positive benefits for their functioning in school.'

These findings were published online by the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.