Abstract
The present study investigates the effect of processing goals on cognition of ongoing behavior of others. We used the think-aloud method to analyze concrete contents of information being processed. Forty-six subjects were randomly divided into an impression group and a memory group. Subjects were instructed to tell the content which he or she was thinking during the observation of the target's behavior. Then we translated the online protocol to script data. The script data were then divided into lexical analysis; that is, we counted nouns, verbs, adjectives, adjectival verbs, and adverbs contained in the script data. Results showed that the proportion of nouns and verbs in the memory group were greater than the impression group. The proportion of adjectives, adjectival verbs, adverbs and trait words in impression group were higher than the memory group. From theabove results we conclude that the information being processed from the ongoing behavior in impression formation was different from the information being processed in the behavioral memory, especially in terms of trait information.
