Social facilitation influences on the oral reading performance of academically handicapped children.
Two competing theories of social facilitation, one stressing audience presence and the other stressing the threat of evaluation, were tested to determine their efficacy in predicting oral reading performance of 24 academically handicapped children. Each handicapped child participated in reading groups with 3 nonhandicapped children. Four conditions reflected audience and evaluation variables: alone/evaluation, alone/no evaluation, group/evaluation, group/no evaluation. Criterion was number of errors in oral reading. Results revealed a significant main effect for evaluation, indicating that academically handicapped children make more errors in oral reading in evaluative situations regardless of audience presence. Results were discussed in relation to mainstreaming. Specifically, the suggestion was made that it might be more advisable to educate academically handicapped children in highly structured settings, or nonevaluative environments, than to place them in classes with children of superior academic ability without meaningful preparation of intervention.
D002648:Child; D004495:Education of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011932:Reading; D012932:Social Facilitation