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 wa s investigated in a sample of 120 student raters who read behavioral d escriptions of college professor classroom performance. It was hypothe sized that observation for purposes of either memorization or impressi on formation and classification of ratee behaviors into two, three, or five levels of performance would influence attention time, recognitio n accuracy, and rating accuracy measures. Results revealed no effects on attention time or recognition accuracy, but did indicate a signific ant observational purpose by articulation interaction. Complex articul ation resulted in more accurate ratings than did a simple level of eva luative articulation, but only when subjects were in an impression for mation, rather than memorization, mode of processing. The pattern of r esults is interpreted as indicating the importance of the schematic ba sis for processing that a rater brings to a rating situation. The poss ibility of cognitive structural characteristics being more important f or performance ratings than processing characteristics is also raised by the pattern of results. Directions for future research and the prac tical implications of the results are also discussed. (C) 1994 Academi c Press, Inc.