IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/coacre/v10y1993i1p333-350.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Auditors' Generation of Diagnostic Hypotheses in Response to a Superior's Suggestion: Interference Effects

Author

Listed:
  • BRYAN K. CHURCH
  • ARNOLD SCHNEIDER

Abstract

. This study investigates the effects of a superior's suggestion on auditors' generation of additional hypotheses from long†term memory (LTM). It investigates whether an inherited hypothesis affects the category membership of additional hypotheses retrieved from LTM, in particular when hypotheses from few alternative categories are considered. Based on research in cognitive psychology, the authors predicted that providing auditors with a superior's suggestion would interfere with their generation of additional hypotheses from the same transaction cycle as that of the superior's suggestion. The experimental results are consistent with the expected interference effect. Auditors who inherited a superior's suggestion from a particular transaction cycle generated fewer additional hypotheses from the same transaction cycle than did auditors who were not provided with a superior's suggestion. Moreover, the effect came into play immediately when auditors inherited a hypothesis involving a typical problem: the first hypothesis generated tended to come from a different transaction cycle than that of the superior's suggestion. Résumé. Dans l'article qui suit, les auteurs se penchent sur l'incidence que peut avoir la suggestion d'un supérieur sur les hypothèses supplémentaires que formulent les vérificateurs en puisant dans la « mémoire à long terme ≫. Ils cherchent à déterminer si une hypothèse transmise exerce une influence sur la catégorie à laquelle appartiennent les hypothèses supplémentaires tirés de la mémoire à long terme, en particulier lorsque les hypothèses envisagées proviennent d'un petit nombre de catégories possibles. En s'appuyant sur la recherche en psychologie cognitive, les auteurs supposent que la suggestion communiquée par un supérieur aux vérificateurs perturbera chez ces derniers la formulation d'hypothèses supplémentaires tirées du même cycle d'opérations que celui dont provient la suggestion du supérieur. Les résultats expérimentaux des chercheurs confirment cet effet perturbateur. Les vérificateurs à qui un supérieur a transmis une suggestion d'hypothèse provenant d'un cycle d'opérations donné ont formulé moins d'hypothèses supplémentaires provenant du même cycle d'opérations que les vérificateurs à qui aucune suggestion n'a été faite par un supérieur. En outre, l'effet perturbateur se manifeste immédiatement au moment où les vérificateurs se voient transmettre une hypothèse faisant intervenir un problème type: la première hypothèse formulée tend à provenir d'un cycle d'opérations différent de celui dont la suggestion du supérieur est issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Bryan K. Church & Arnold Schneider, 1993. "Auditors' Generation of Diagnostic Hypotheses in Response to a Superior's Suggestion: Interference Effects," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(1), pages 333-350, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:10:y:1993:i:1:p:333-350
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1911-3846.1993.tb00395.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1911-3846.1993.tb00395.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1911-3846.1993.tb00395.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Snowball, Doug, 1980. "Some effects of accounting expertise and information load: An empirical study," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 323-338, July.
    2. Bonner, Se & Lewis, Bl, 1990. "Determinants Of Auditor Expertise," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28, pages 1-20.
    3. Libby, R, 1985. "Availability And The Generation Of Hypotheses In Analytical Review," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 648-667.
    4. Einhorn, Hj, 1976. "Synthesis - Accounting And Behavioral-Science," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14, pages 196-206.
    5. Peters, Jm, 1990. "A Cognitive Computational Model Of Risk Hypothesis Generation," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28, pages 83-103.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janne Chung & Gary Monroe, 1999. "The effects of counterexplanation and source of hypothesis on developing audit judgment," Accounting Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 111-126.
    2. D. Eric Hirst & Lisa Koonce, 1996. "Audit Analytical Procedures: A Field Investigation," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(2), pages 457-486, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lau, Yeng Wai, 2014. "Aggregated or disaggregated information first?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 2376-2384.
    2. Dezoort, F. T., 1998. "An analysis of experience effects on audit committee members' oversight judgments," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-21, January.
    3. Choo, Freddie, 1996. "Auditors' knowledge content and judgment performance: A cognitive script approach," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 339-359, May.
    4. Solomon, Ira & Trotman, Ken T., 2003. "Experimental judgment and decision research in auditing: the first 25 years of AOS," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 395-412, May.
    5. Ismail, Zubaidah & Trotman, Ken T., 1995. "The impact of the review process in hypothesis generation tasks," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 345-357, July.
    6. Bills, Kenneth L. & Cobabe, Matthew & Pittman, Jeffrey & Stein, Sarah E., 2020. "To share or not to share: The importance of peer firm similarity to auditor choice," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    7. D. Eric Hirst, 1994. "Auditor Sensitivity to Earnings Management," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(1), pages 405-422, June.
    8. Cindy Moeckel, 1991. "Two factors affecting an auditor's ability to integrate audit evidence," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(1), pages 270-292, September.
    9. Luippold, Benjamin L. & Kida, Thomas & Piercey, M. David & Smith, James F., 2015. "Managing audits to manage earnings: The impact of diversions on an auditor’s detection of earnings management," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 39-54.
    10. Clement, Michael B. & Koonce, Lisa & Lopez, Thomas J., 2007. "The roles of task-specific forecasting experience and innate ability in understanding analyst forecasting performance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 378-398, December.
    11. Stanley F. Biggs & Theodore J. Mock & Roger Simnett, 1999. "Analytical Procedures: Promise, Problems and Implications for Practice," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 9(17), pages 42-52, March.
    12. Sridhar Ramamoorti & Andrew D. Bailey Jr & Richard O. Traver, 1999. "Risk assessment in internal auditing: a neural network approach," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(3), pages 159-180, September.
    13. Hung Chan, K. & Mo, Phyllis L. L., 1998. "Ownership effects on audit-detected error characteristics: An empirical study in an emerging economy," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 235-261.
    14. Arnold, Vicky & Collier, Philip A. & Leech, Stewart A. & Rose, Jacob M. & Sutton, Steve G., 2023. "Can knowledge based systems be designed to counteract deskilling effects?," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    15. Skerratt, L.C.L. & Woodhead, A., 1992. "Modelling audit risk," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 119-137.
    16. Rita Lamboglia & Daniela Mancini, 2021. "The relationship between auditors’ human capital attributes and the assessment of the control environment," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 25(4), pages 1211-1239, December.
    17. Emett, Scott A. & Nelson, Mark W., 2017. "Reporting accounting changes and their multi-period effects," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 52-72.
    18. Ritchie, Bob & Khorwatt, Esamaddin, 2007. "The attitude of Libyan auditors to inherent control risk assessment," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 39-59.
    19. Christensen, Brant E. & Newton, Nathan J. & Wilkins, Michael S., 2021. "How do team workloads and team staffing affect the audit? Archival evidence from U.S. audits," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    20. Petersen, Knut & Patzke, Henning, 1986. "Individuelles Informationsverhalten als Gegenstand des "Behavioral Accounting": Eine Meta-Analyse der empirischen Forschung," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 177, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:10:y:1993:i:1:p:333-350. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1911-3846 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.