This article reports on three studies about the reading reliability of lay and expert readers in rating three kinds of writing assignments. Readers had to rate the Con tent and Language Usage of students' writing performances. The studies show that expert readers are more reliable in rating Usage, whereas both lay readers and expert readers prove to be reliable raters of Content. When the writing assignment becomes more restrictive, as is the case with interlinear revision tasks, lay readers are also reliable raters of Usage. The conclusion is that the effect of expertise is dependent on the rating task the readers have to perform. Expertise pertains most to language usage and to the cases in which the writing assignments as well as the scoring instructions are relatively free.

A method for assessing rater reliability by means of a design of overlapping rater teams is presented. The products to be rated are split randomly into m disjoint subsamples, m equaling the number of raters. Each rater rates at least two subsamples according to a prefixed design. The covariances or correlations of the ratings can be analyzed with LISREL models, resulting in estimates of the rater reliabilities. Models in which the rater reliabilities are congeneric, tauequivalent, or parallel can be tested. We address problems concerning the identification and the degrees of freedom of the models and present two examples based on essay ratings.

Same—different judgments concerning melodic stimuli prove to be ambiguous in their interpretation. I argue that such judgments are the result of a dual process. The subject's musical experience may determine whether he or she uses one of these processes or both. The first process may be adapted to the contour and the second to the scale of the melody. According to Dowling (1978), subjects use contour but do not use all aspects of scale in making same—different judgments. In the present experiment musically experienced subjects were required to judge the similarities between three-tone motifs that were heard in close succession. Directional contour proved to be the most important attribute, but all aspects of the scale were also utilized in making the judgments. If contour and scale are processed separately, experienced subjects use at least a dual mechanism in processing both attributes. Some further evidence shows that contour and scale are processed separately.

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