The study of configural information processing among students

• Main Authors: Cheong, Kah Lai, Koh, Yen Khoon, Tan, Tock Siong
• Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Accounting
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/55697
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Configura! information processing has been much debated and researched in prior psychology and accounting studies. It is aptly defined as the cognition in which the pattern (or configuration) of stimuli is important to the subsequent judgment or decision. Much research has been conducted to fmd the presence of configura! information processing among decision makers who make important judgments in their professional capacities. Recent accounting researches have concentrated on the effects of configura! information processing on auditors' judgment models validated by various environmental factors (for example, time-pressure, expertise, and audit program structure). These prior studies have provided the platform for this applied research project, which is the fust of its kind to study configura! information processing among students in the local context. The subjects taking part in the experiment are 174 final year Accountancy undergraduates from Nanyang Technological University. This research paper addresses 3 questions. First, do these student-subjects exhibit configura! information processing in their judgments? Second, is the ability to invoke configura) infom1ation processing time-dependent? Third, does expertise in auditing skills significantly affect the student-subj ects' decisions?. A "survey" was used for this research. The student-subjects were required to complete a case study and a questionnaire. The case study was adapted from a similar experiment conducted by Brown and Solomon (1991). Our experiment confirms the presence of configura! information processing among the student-subjects. In addition, the findings on the effects of different timepressure on configura! information processing showed that the student-subjects' abilities to invoke configura! information processing differed significantly amongst the different time conditions. As for the effect of expertise levels, there is no indication of any significant effect on the judgments. This, however, presents a departure from prior studies that have found the importance of expertise in decision-making.