The influence of pre-information on the rating of articulation

This study evaluated whether pre-information influenced experienced and inexperienced speech clinicians' ratings of a child's articulation. All clinicans received the same written pre-information report, except that for one half of both groups the report ended with the statement that the child's articulation problem was mild-to-moderate and for the other half that is was moderate-to-severe. Each clinician completed a standard articulation inventory based on a video-tape presentation and then rated the child's articulation on a nine-point scale. Results on the rating scale were in the direction of the pre-information rating for each group, with the experienced groups' differences being statistically significant. Results on the inventory demonstrated the following : the expected shift for one experienced group, an unexplained very poor scoring of articulation errors by the other experienced group, and no significant difference between the inexperienced clinician groups. We conclude that on the more subjective task---the rating of an articulation problem--an examiner bias effect was noted, with the strongest effect being shown by the experienced clinicians. On the more specific tasks--articulation inventory--the results were equivocal.