Paper Info
Title
Simultaneous measurement of program comprehension with fMRI and eye tracking: a case study
Abstract
Background Researchers have recently started to validate decades-old program-comprehension models using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While fMRI helps us to understand neural correlates of cognitive processes during program comprehension, its comparatively low temporal resolution (i.e., seconds) cannot capture fast cognitive subprocesses (i.e., milliseconds). Aims To increase the explanatory power of fMRI measurement of programmers, we are exploring in this methodological paper the feasibility of adding simultaneous eye tracking to fMRI measurement. By developing a method to observe programmers with two complementary measures, we aim at obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of program comprehension. Method We conducted a controlled fMRI experiment of 22 student participants with simultaneous eye tracking. Results We have been able to successfully capture fMRI and eye-tracking data, although with limitations regarding partial data loss and spatial imprecision. The biggest issue that we experienced is the partial loss of data: for only 10 participants, we could collect a complete set of high-precision eye-tracking data. Since some participants of fMRI studies show excessive head motion, the proportion of full and high-quality data on fMRI and eye tracking is rather low. Still, the remaining data allowed us to confirm our prior hypothesis of semantic recall during program comprehension, which was not possible with fMRI alone. Conclusions Simultaneous measurement of program comprehension with fMRI and eye tracking is promising, but with limitations. By adding simultaneous eye tracking to our fMRI study framework, we can conduct more fine-grained fMRI analyses, which in turn helps us to understand programmer behavior better.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1145/3239235.3240495
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 12TH ACM/IEEE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EMPIRICAL SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AND MEASUREMENT (ESEM 2018)
Keywords
Field
DocType
program comprehension, functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye tracking
Data mining,Neural correlates of consciousness,Programmer,Data loss,Functional magnetic resonance imaging,Computer science,Speech recognition,Eye tracking,Cognition,Program comprehension,Recall
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-5823-1
3
0.36
References 
Authors
17
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Norman Peitek1275.48
Janet Siegmund233827.69
Chris Parnin394647.48
Sven Apel43980184.13
Johannes C. Hofmeister5111.13
André Brechmann610813.43