State Machine (ASM) theory is a well-known state-based formal method. As in other state-based formal methods, the proposed specification languages for ASMs still lack easy-to-comprehend abstractions to express structural and behavioral aspects of specifications. Our goal is to investigate object-oriented abstractions such as interfaces and traits for ASM-based specification languages. We report on a controlled experiment with 98 participants to study the specification efficiency and effectiveness in which participants needed to comprehend an informal specification as problem (stimulus) in form of a textual description and express a corresponding solution in form of a textual ASM specification using either interface or trait syntax extensions. The study was carried out with a completely randomized design and one alternative (interface or trait) per experimental group. The results indicate that specification effectiveness of the traits experiment group shows a better performance compared to the interfaces experiment group, but specification efficiency shows no statistically significant differences. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study studying the specification effectiveness and efficiency of object-oriented abstractions in the context of formal methods.

中文翻译：

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在抽象状态机中指定接口和特征抽象：一个受控实验

状态机（ASM）理论是一种著名的基于状态的形式化方法。与其他基于状态的形式化方法一样，为 ASM 提出的规范语言仍然缺乏易于理解的抽象来表达规范的结构和行为方面。我们的目标是研究面向对象的抽象，例如基于 ASM 的规范语言的接口和特征。我们报告了一个有 98 名参与者的对照实验，以研究规范效率和有效性，其中参与者需要将非正式规范理解为文本描述形式的问题（刺激），并使用文本 ASM 规范的形式表达相应的解决方案接口或特征语法扩展。该研究采用完全随机设计和每个实验组一个替代方案（界面或特征）进行。结果表明，与接口实验组相比，特质实验组的规范有效性表现出更好的性能，但规范效率没有统计学上的显着差异。据我们所知，这是第一个在形式化方法的上下文中研究面向对象抽象的规范有效性和效率的实证研究。