当前位置: X-MOL 学术ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Toward an Objective Measure of Developers’ Cognitive Activities
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology ( IF 4.4 ) Pub Date : 2021-03-09 , DOI: 10.1145/3434643
Zohreh Sharafi 1 , Yu Huang 1 , Kevin Leach 1 , Westley Weimer 1
Affiliation  

Understanding how developers carry out different computer science activities with objective measures can help to improve productivity and guide the use and development of supporting tools in software engineering. In this article, we present two controlled experiments involving 112 students to explore multiple computing activities (code comprehension, code review, and data structure manipulations) using three different objective measures including neuroimaging (functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)) and eye tracking. By examining code review and prose review using fMRI, we find that the neural representations of programming languages vs. natural languages are distinct. We can classify which task a participant is undertaking based solely on brain activity, and those task distinctions are modulated by expertise. We leverage insights from the psychological notion of spatial ability to decode the neural representations of several fundamental data structures and their manipulations using fMRI, fNIRS, and eye tracking. We examine list, array, tree, and mental rotation tasks and find that data structure and spatial operations use the same focal regions of the brain but to different degrees: they are related but distinct neural tasks. We demonstrate best practices and describe the implication and tradeoffs between fMRI, fNIRS, eye tracking, and self-reporting for software engineering research.

中文翻译:

对开发人员的认知活动进行客观测量

了解开发人员如何以客观的方式开展不同的计算机科学活动有助于提高生产力并指导软件工程中支持工具的使用和开发。在本文中,我们展示了两个受控实验,涉及 112 名学生,使用包括神经成像(功能近红外光谱 (fNIRS) 和功能磁共振成像)在内的三种不同客观测量来探索多种计算活动(代码理解、代码审查和数据结构操作) (fMRI)) 和眼动追踪。通过使用 fMRI 检查代码审查和散文审查,我们发现编程语言与自然语言的神经表示是不同的。我们可以仅根据大脑活动来分类参与者正在执行的任务,这些任务的区别是由专业知识决定的。我们利用空间能力的心理学概念来解码几种基本数据结构的神经表示及其使用 fMRI、fNIRS 和眼动追踪的操作。我们检查了列表、数组、树和心理旋转任务,发现数据结构和空间操作使用相同的大脑焦点区域,但程度不同:它们是相关但不同的神经任务。我们展示了最佳实践,并描述了 fMRI、fNIRS、眼动追踪和软件工程研究自我报告之间的含义和权衡。和眼动追踪。我们检查了列表、数组、树和心理旋转任务,发现数据结构和空间操作使用相同的大脑焦点区域,但程度不同:它们是相关但不同的神经任务。我们展示了最佳实践,并描述了 fMRI、fNIRS、眼动追踪和软件工程研究自我报告之间的含义和权衡。和眼动追踪。我们检查了列表、数组、树和心理旋转任务,发现数据结构和空间操作使用相同的大脑焦点区域,但程度不同:它们是相关但不同的神经任务。我们展示了最佳实践,并描述了 fMRI、fNIRS、眼动追踪和软件工程研究自我报告之间的含义和权衡。
更新日期:2021-03-09
down
wechat
bug