Teacher judgments in school exams: Influences of students' lower-order-thinking skills on the assessment of students’ higher-order-thinking skills

School exams often measure students' higher-order-thinking-skills (HOTS) subsequent to students' lower-order-thinking-skills (LOTS). Teachers should assess students' HOT separately from students’ LOT. Three experimental studies (N = 36/41/40) investigated whether assessing LOTS-related performances can distort subsequent judgments of HOTS-related performances within school exams in different grade levels and subjects. In each study, participants assessed four exams: Each began with good vs. poor LOTS-related performances and finished with good vs. poor HOTS-related performances. Results showed that participants judged the HOTS-related performances more negatively (positively) when LOTS-related performances were poor (vs. good). We discuss the results concerning the cognitive modeling of teacher judgments.