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

. 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. Resume. Dans l'article qui suit, les auteurs se penchent sur l'incidence que peut avoir la suggestion d'un superieur sur les hypotheses supplementaires que formulent les verificateurs en puisant dans la « memoire a long terme ≫. Ils cherchent a determiner si une hypothese transmise exerce une influence sur la categorie a laquelle appartiennent les hypotheses supplementaires tires de la memoire a long terme, en particulier lorsque les hypotheses envisagees proviennent d'un petit nombre de categories possibles. En s'appuyant sur la recherche en psychologie cognitive, les auteurs supposent que la suggestion communiquee par un superieur aux verificateurs perturbera chez ces derniers la formulation d'hypotheses supplementaires tirees du meme cycle d'operations que celui dont provient la suggestion du superieur. Les resultats experimentaux des chercheurs confirment cet effet perturbateur. Les verificateurs a qui un superieur a transmis une suggestion d'hypothese provenant d'un cycle d'operations donne ont formule moins d'hypotheses supplementaires provenant du meme cycle d'operations que les verificateurs a qui aucune suggestion n'a ete faite par un superieur. En outre, l'effet perturbateur se manifeste immediatement au moment ou les verificateurs se voient transmettre une hypothese faisant intervenir un probleme type: la premiere hypothese formulee tend a provenir d'un cycle d'operations different de celui dont la suggestion du superieur est issue.