The Effect of Experience on Auditors' Memory Errors

Abstract

This paper reports results from a study of the effects of audit experience on the frequency of two types of memory error: failure to integrate and reconstruction. Failure to integrate is defined here as failure to make mental connections between separately received pieces of information; reconstruction is defined here as altering the mental representation of information to make it consistent with existing knowledge (or memories). I asked auditors to review model work papers containing contradictions they would have discovered in the absence of reconstruction or failure to integrate. Subjects were able to refer freely to the experimental materials during their reviews, as they could do on actual audit engagements during the work paper review process. Since the work papers related to several audit tests and took about one hour to review, subjects had to use their memories to relate critical observations made earlier to later pieces of evidence when attempting to formulate an accurate representation of the meaning of all the evidence taken together, including detection of the contradictions. I found that subjects at all levels of experience made memory errors, and that both types of memory error were related to experience. Inex-