CATEGORY WIDTH COGNITIVE STYLE AS A FACTOR IN ACCOUNTANTS' PERCEPTIONS OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION
This paper reports the findings of a laboratory experiment designed to investigate the relationship of category width (CW) cognitive style with accountants' perceptions of accounting information. Subjects drawn from large accounting firms in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Australia, were classified into broad, medium, and narrow categories following the test devised by Pettigrew [19]. Subjects were requested to state their level of confidence in decisions they had made after receiving (1) conventional accounting information or (2) conventional accounting information and human resources accounting (HRA) information using a one-group pretest-posttest design. The results indicated a significant relationship between CW cognitive style and the accountants' confidence in their decisions. Furthermore, CW cognitive style moderated the accounting-information/decision-making relationship.
Cognitive Styles: What Are They?
An attempt was made to determine whether the traits known as cognitive styles, which have been variously interpreted, could be brought under a single broad concept. An examination of the evidence showed that most of those traits could be related to the writer's structure of intellect, in one way or another. It is not yet clear whether they should be recognized as intellectual abilities or intellectual controls, or both. A few seem more identifiable with traits of interest or of temperament. It was suggested that the structure-of-intellect model could serve as a frame of reference for future research in this area.
MULTIVARIATE MODELS OF COGNITION AND PERSONALITY: THE NEED FOR BOTH PROCESS AND STRUCTURE IN PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY AND MEASUREMENT1
This paper calls for the development of sequential models of cognition and personality as a way of adding process to the primarily structural concerns of current multivariate models. At the same time, it points to the results of factor analysis, particularly as summarized in a hierarchical extension of Guilford's structure-of-intellect system, as a source of component variables for such sequential formulations. The need to take into account personality, developmental, and environmental variables in these sequential models is also emphasized.