PSYCHOSOCIAL FACTORS RELATED TO READING FLUENCY DURING THE TRANSITION FROM ORAL TO SILENT READING Dreher, Taylor The present study investigated how reading fluency is related to social desirability and academic self-concept during a critical period in reading development for children. It was predicted that social desirability would be a better predictor of oral reading fluency, while academic self-concept would be a better predictor of silent reading fluency. Participants were sixty third-grade students from Catholic schools in a large metropolitan area. All children completed measures of oral reading fluency, silent reading fluency, academic self-concept, and social desirability. Multiple regression and dominance analysis supported the hypothesized relationships. Social desirability had a significant negative relationship with oral reading fluency, while academic self-concept was unrelated to oral reading fluency. In addition, academic self-concept had a significant positive relationship with silent reading fluency, while social desirability had a smaller, but still significant, negative relationship with silent reading fluency. The present findings suggest that psychosocial factors like social desirability and academic self-concept may help identify children who are at risk for reading underachievement. Future research should use a longitudinal design to examine if measuring social desirability and academic self-concept in third grade can predict important outcomes, such as reading fluency in fourth grade or beyond. M.S. in Psychology, May 2014 Hopkins, Joyce 2014 2014-05 Thesis application/pdf islandora:9086 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/3294 PSYCH / Institute of Psychology Illinois Institute of Technology en In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access