A comparison of serial monadic and attribute-by-attribute protocols for simple descriptive analysis with untrained judges

Two experiments were performed in which untrained judges were required to perform a descriptive analysis, using a serial monadic protocol and an attribute-by-attribute protocol. They reached ‘criterion’ performance more rapidly using the attribute-by-attribute protocol, indicating that they were using a relative scaling strategy. Criterion performance required judges to rate all attributes according to the rank order of their physical strengths. Later, they reached criterion performance with the serial monadic protocol, indicating that during experimentation, they had learned to establish sufficient intensity exemplars for an absolute scaling strategy.