TY - JOUR AU - Garvey, Anne M. AU - Gonzalo-Angulo, José Antonio AU - Parte, Laura PY - 2017/07/26 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Cognitive Load Theory: Limiting the GAP between Academics and Students in Accounting and Auditing JF - Journal of Business and Legal Sciences / Revista de Ciências Empresariais e Jurídicas JA - RCEJ VL - IS - 28 SE - Articles DO - 10.26537/rebules.v0i28.1024 UR - https://parc.ipp.pt/index.php/rebules/article/view/1024 SP - 5-28 AB - <p>The objective of this paper is to investigate if academics and students share similar&nbsp;cognitive structures in relation to the True and Fair View (TFV) concept, a complex accounting&nbsp;principle, which has no official definition and is open to interpretation and professional&nbsp;judgement. A survey method was used to obtain data for this study. The survey allows us to&nbsp;explore academics and students cognitive structures in order to discover differences and the&nbsp;reasons for the variances if any.<br>Our results show that academics and students do not share similar cognitive structures in&nbsp;three areas of interest:&nbsp;i) compliance with accounting rules and the fulfilment of True and Fair&nbsp;View,&nbsp;ii) the need to provide a written definition of True and Fair View, and&nbsp;iii) the interpretation&nbsp;of True and Fair View.&nbsp;The evidence can be interpreted due to the fact that academics and&nbsp;students tend to use different cognitive schemes in problem solving at least in complex&nbsp;concepts such as TFV. The evidence is supported by the cognitive load theory (CLT).<br>We believe that useful financial information can be improved by understanding these&nbsp;differences and by subsequently implementing criteria in order to reduce the gap between&nbsp;academics and students in the area of information comprehension and presentation with the&nbsp;use of schemes, improvement in educational material and other assistance in the application&nbsp;and interpretation of written standards.</p> ER -