The Effect of Time Pressure on Auditors' Configural Information Processing

Abstract

This research investigates the effect of time pressure on auditors' configural information processing in light of the pervasiveness of time pressure in the real world auditing situation and in light of the available cognitive psychology findings that suggest configural information processing is time dependent. We hypothesize that if auditors do not have sufficient time to retrieve specific patterns of cue interactions from their knowledge structures, they will not be in a position to invoke configural information processing. We further hypothesize that auditors will invoke a variety of cognitive simplification strategies under time pressure. The net effect of these cognitive simplification strategies is that the auditors' judgements will be made based on decreasing weights given to interactive terms. Our experiment confirms the absence of configural information processing among auditors under time pressure. The findings also directionally support the hypothesis that the variance accounted for by the interaction terms will diminish under time pressure due to cognitive simplification strategies.