Third Party Observers: Why All the Fuss?

Following a brief discussion of the emergence of third party observation as an issue in neuropsychology, this article reviews the social psychological theory of social facilitation. Social facilitation refers to the impact of another person, whether as an observer or a performer of the same activity, on an individual's performance. Both performance enhancements and impairments can be caused by this phenomenon. The article concludes with a review of the empirical studies that have demonstrated that a third party observer significantly impacts an individual's performance on some neuropsychological tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]