Understanding Understanding Source Code with …

Understanding Understanding Source Code withFunctional magnetic resonance ImagingJanet Siegmund , Christian K stner , Sven Apel , Chris Parnin , Anja Bethmann ,Thomas Leich , Gunter Saake , and Andr Brechmann University of Passau, Germany Carnegie Mellon University, USA Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Leibniz Inst. for Neurobiology Magdeburg, Germany Metop Research Institute, Magdeburg, Germany University of Magdeburg, GermanyABSTRACTP rogram comprehension is an important cognitive process that in-herently eludes direct measurement. Thus, researchers are strug-gling with providing suitable programming languages, tools, orcoding conventions to support developers in their everyday this paper, we explore whetherfunctional magnetic resonanceimaging (fMRI), which is well established in cognitive neuroscience,is feasible to soundly measure program comprehension. In a con-trolled experiment, we observed 17 participants inside an fMRIscanner while they were comprehending short Source -code snip-pets, which we contrasted with locating syntax errors.

method is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a non-invasive means of measuring blood-oxygenation levels that change as a result of localized brain activity. In this paper, we report on results and experience from applying fMRI in a program-comprehension experiment. While our experi- ment is a first step toward measuring …

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  Functional, Imaging, Magnetic, Resonance, Functional magnetic resonance imaging

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