Toward Measuring Program Comprehension with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

kaestner@cs.cmu.edu (J. Siegmund, A. Brechmann, S. Apel, C. Kästner, J. Liebig, T. Leich, G. Saake)
Sat, 05 Mar 2016 18:41:39 -0500

Janet Siegmund, André Brechmann, Sven Apel, Christian Kästner, Jörg Liebig, Thomas Leich, and Gunter Saake. Toward Measuring Program Comprehension with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. In Proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering -- New Ideas Track (FSE-NIER), pages 24:1--24:4, November 2012.

Program comprehension is an often evaluated, internal cognitive process. In neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) imaging is used to visualize such internal cognitive processes. We propose an experimental design to measure program comprehension based on fMRI. In the long run, we hope to answer questions like What distinguishes good programmers from bad programmers? or What makes a good programmer?