Articlediamond2017

Cognitive brain mapping of auditors and accountants in going concern judgments

César Valentim de Oliveira Carvalho Júnior · Edgard Bruno Cornacchione · Armando Freitas da Rocha · Fábio Rocha

11 citations0/0 files storedRevista Contabilidade & Finanças

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims to explain the extent to which brain mapping patterns follow behavioral patterns of auditors and accountants’ judgments when assessing evidence for decisions involving going concern. This multidisciplinary research involved investigating the relation between the theory of belief revision, neuroscience, and neuroaccounting with a sample of auditors and accountants. We developed a randomized controlled trial study with 12 auditors and 13 accountants. Auditors and accountants presented similar judgments about going concern, specially demonstrating greater sensitivity to negative evidence. Despite similar judgments, results showed diverging brain processing patterns between groups, as distinct reasoning was used to reach going concern estimates. During the decision process, auditors presented homogeneous brain processing patterns, while accountants evidenced conflicts and greater cognitive effort. For both groups, the occurrence of maximization (minimization) of judgments is observed in brain areas associated with identification of needs and motivations linked to individuals’ relations with their social group. This was strengthened by the lack of significant differences between the regression maps of auditors and accountants, leading to interpretation of the groups’ findings as homogeneous brain behavior. Despite familiarity with the executed task and knowledge of auditing standards, as a result of the greater use of algorithmic reasoning the auditors’ judgments were similar to that of accountants. On the other hand, the accountants’ greater cognitive effort, due to the experiencing of greater conflict in the decision-making process, made them use more quantic brain processing abilities, which are responsible for conscious reasoning. This was observed in the maximizations (minimizations) of the estimates in brain areas related to concerns with the judgments’ social repercussions, which culminated in some degree of “conservatism” in their decisions. Furthermore, these findings reveal another opportunity to discuss the assumption of the brain as the original accounting institution.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

References

1985Positive Accounting Theory 1992Order effects in belief updating: The belief-adjustment model 2002Do Non–Audit Service Fees Impair Auditor Independence? Evidence from Going Concern Audit Opinions 1998Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods 2007Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations 2009Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain 2007Brief Report: Post Hoc Power, Observed Power, A Priori Power, Retrospective Power, Prospective Power, Achieved Power: Sorting Out Appropriate Uses of Statistical Power Analyses 1999The Effect of Experience on the Use of Irrelevant Evidence in Auditor Judgment

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.