creator Dreher, Taylor advisor Hopkins, Joyce 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. Submitted by Liana Khananashvili (khananashvili@iit.edu) on 2014-10-22T20:38:42Z No. of bitstreams: 2 DreherThesis.pdf: 220702 bytes, checksum: 9470001a59c325d44ce64e4f047b689e (MD5) TitlePage.pdf: 247708 bytes, checksum: eeb72fdc5cdbd53765c1637e3d2790fd (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-22T20:38:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 DreherThesis.pdf: 220702 bytes, checksum: 9470001a59c325d44ce64e4f047b689e (MD5) TitlePage.pdf: 247708 bytes, checksum: eeb72fdc5cdbd53765c1637e3d2790fd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05 M.S. in Psychology, May 2014 2014 2014-05 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/3294 en Thesis born digital application/pdf In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access PSYCH / Institute of Psychology Illinois Institute of Technology Affiliated department