OBSERVATIONAL PURPOSE AND EVALUATIVE ARTICULATION IN FRAME-OF-REFERENCE TRAINING - THE EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE PROCESSING MODES ON RATING ACCURACY

The influence of observational purpose and the degree of articulation in raters' judgment processes on attention, recognition, and rating was investigated in a sample of 120 student raters who read behavioral descriptions of college professor classroom performance. It was hypothesized that observation for purposes of either memorization or impression formation and classification of ratee behaviors into two, three, or five levels of performance would influence attention time, recognition accuracy, and rating accuracy measures. Results revealed no effects on attention time or recognition accuracy, but did indicate a significant observational purpose by articulation interaction. Complex articulation resulted in more accurate ratings than did a simple level of evaluative articulation, but only when subjects were in an impression formation, rather than memorization, mode of processing. The pattern of results is interpreted as indicating the importance of the schematic basis for processing that a rater brings to a rating situation. The possibility of cognitive structural characteristics being more important for performance ratings than processing characteristics is also raised by the pattern of results. Directions for future research and the practical implications of the results are also discussed. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.