Now my question is do you think that even though flowering might be boosted by a week, that it could possibly effect yield in the end. I've also read that due to the extended period of darkness between veg and flower, harvesting will be sooner.

Idealy, plants should grow stress free, other than natural stress from mother nature ie. wind, rain, extreme high's and extreme low's of temperature. Something as important as light schedule can be a high stress factor for some growers. People end up with hermies or males due to the stress of inconsistant 'days and nights' all the time. now given some of these people may have no control over these incidences where there may have been a power surge, or a ballast blowing a fuse, or just any curveball that life throws us when we're trying to accomplish something significant. So, even something as little as just switching the timer to 12/12, puts some form a stress on the plant. This is an 'artificial' environment, and the goal is to try to imitate nature to the best of our ability. It's like artificial flavoring in a juice drink opposed to natural flavoring in a juice. Natural always taste better.

So by having a gradual decrease in the light schedule, flowering may not start as quickly as the 'artificial technique', but yield and quality might be greater in the end. The only way to find out is to do what jakester said and do a controlled experiment. Sounds like it could be fun haha.