Abstract
This work uses theory from organizational behavior and cognitive psychology to address issues affecting word-processing performance. I deduce that expertise is a domain-specific ability-construct that affects task performance directly and indirectly through behavioral intentions. While previous research has suggested that skill-based characteristics, such as expertise, operate through intentions in affecting task performance findings presented here, suggest that this is only part of the story. Specifically, results of this study show that expertise moderates the relationship between intentions and task performance. The interaction pattern between two characteristics of expertise (i.e., self-monitoring skill and perceptual skill) and intentions support a "facilitator" hypothesis, which states that the effect of intentions on performance will be stronger for subjects low in expertise than for subjects high in expertise. In addition, results suggest that one characteristic (i.e., domain-specific knowledge) operates as an "inhibitor" when combined with intentions in affecting performance. Specifically, the effect of intentions on task performance is stronger for subjects with high levels of domain-specific knowledge than for subjects low in domain-specific knowledge. In all cases the findings add to the extant literature by showing that the effect of intentions on performance is contingent upon domain-specific cognitive characteristics. In addition, the study's results offer support for the distinction between expertise and other, previously identified, task-relevant characteristics. Specifically, the findings presented in the paper show that the interaction between expertise and intentions explains meaningful variance in task performance, even when controlling for domain-general characteristics, such as age, cognitive ability and education, and when controlling for an arguably easier to measure domain-specific characteristics (i.e., experience). Implications for research and practice are offered.