Mainstreaming hearing-impaired students: the effect of effort in communicating on cooperation and interpersonal attraction.

Cooperative and individualistic learning experiences were compared in terms of their effects on interaction and relationships between hearing and hearing-impaired students. Two contradictory hypotheses were tested--one stating that the effort required for hearing and hearing-impaired students to communicate would lead to frustration, withdrawal, exclusion, and rejection; the other stating that cooperative learning experiences would lead to cross-handicap interpersonal attraction regardless of communication difficulties. Thirty 3rd-grade students (20 hearing and 10 hearing impaired) were assigned to conditions on a stratified, random basis controlling for handicap, sex, and ability level. They participated in the study for 55 min a day for 15 instructional days. The results indicate that subjects involved in cooperative learning experiences performed higher on measures of interaction and interpersonal attraction between hearing and hearing-impaired students than did subjects involved in individualistic learning experiences.