Eye movements in code reading: relaxing the linear order

Teresa Busjahn; Roman Bednarik; Andrew Begel; Martha Crosby; James Paterson; Carsten Schulte; Bonita Sharif; Sascha Tamm

doi:10.1109/ICPC.2015.36

Eye movements in code reading: relaxing the linear order

Teresa Busjahn, Roman Bednarik, Andrew Begel, Martha Crosby, James Paterson, Carsten Schulte, Bonita Sharif, Sascha Tamm

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

175 Citations (Scopus)

1157 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Code reading is an important skill in programming. Inspired by the linearity that people exhibit while natural language text reading, we designed local and global gaze-based measures to characterize linearity (left-to-right and top-to-bottom) in reading source code. Unlike natural language text, source code is executable and requires a specific reading approach. To validate these measures, we compared the eye movements of novice and expert programmers who were asked to read and comprehend short snippets of natural language text and Java programs. Our results show that novices read source code less linearly than natural language text. Moreover, experts read code less linearly than novices. These findings indicate that there are specific differences between reading natural language and source code, and suggest that non-linear reading skills increase with expertise. We discuss the implications for practitioners and educators.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	2015 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension
Publisher	IEEE
Pages	255-265
Number of pages	11
ISBN (Electronic)	9781467381598
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPC.2015.36
Publication status	Published - 7 Sept 2015

Keywords

eye tracking
novice
expert
eye movement
code reading

Documents and Links

10.1109/ICPC.2015.36

Busjahn, T. et al (2015) Eye movements in code reading
This is the accepted author manuscript of a conference paper published in 2015 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension by IEEE. Available at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7181454/ Copyright: © 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Author accepted manuscript, 266 KB

https://dibt.unimol.it/ICPC15

175 Citations
1 Article

EMIP: The eye movements in programming dataset
Bednarik, R., Busjahn, T., Gibaldi, A., Ahadi, A., Bielikova, M., Crosby, M., Essig, K., Fagerholm, F., Jbara, A., Lister, R., Orlov, P., Paterson, J., Sharif, B., SirkiäFIn, T., Stelovsky, J., Tvarozek, J., Vrzakova, H. & van der Linde, I., 15 Oct 2020, In: Science of Computer Programming. 198, 11 p., 102520.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
20 Citations (Scopus)

Cite this

@inproceedings{86ee1336aaac47ab9aa8bbb3291791fd,

title = "Eye movements in code reading: relaxing the linear order",

abstract = "Code reading is an important skill in programming. Inspired by the linearity that people exhibit while natural language text reading, we designed local and global gaze-based measures to characterize linearity (left-to-right and top-to-bottom) in reading source code. Unlike natural language text, source code is executable and requires a specific reading approach. To validate these measures, we compared the eye movements of novice and expert programmers who were asked to read and comprehend short snippets of natural language text and Java programs. Our results show that novices read source code less linearly than natural language text. Moreover, experts read code less linearly than novices. These findings indicate that there are specific differences between reading natural language and source code, and suggest that non-linear reading skills increase with expertise. We discuss the implications for practitioners and educators.",

keywords = "eye tracking, novice, expert, eye movement, code reading",

author = "Teresa Busjahn and Roman Bednarik and Andrew Begel and Martha Crosby and James Paterson and Carsten Schulte and Bonita Sharif and Sascha Tamm",

year = "2015",

month = sep,

day = "7",

doi = "10.1109/ICPC.2015.36",

language = "English",

pages = "255--265",

booktitle = "2015 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension",

publisher = "IEEE",

address = "United States",

}

TY - GEN

T1 - Eye movements in code reading: relaxing the linear order

AU - Busjahn, Teresa

AU - Bednarik, Roman

AU - Begel, Andrew

AU - Crosby, Martha

AU - Paterson, James

AU - Schulte, Carsten

AU - Sharif, Bonita

AU - Tamm, Sascha

PY - 2015/9/7

Y1 - 2015/9/7

N2 - Code reading is an important skill in programming. Inspired by the linearity that people exhibit while natural language text reading, we designed local and global gaze-based measures to characterize linearity (left-to-right and top-to-bottom) in reading source code. Unlike natural language text, source code is executable and requires a specific reading approach. To validate these measures, we compared the eye movements of novice and expert programmers who were asked to read and comprehend short snippets of natural language text and Java programs. Our results show that novices read source code less linearly than natural language text. Moreover, experts read code less linearly than novices. These findings indicate that there are specific differences between reading natural language and source code, and suggest that non-linear reading skills increase with expertise. We discuss the implications for practitioners and educators.

AB - Code reading is an important skill in programming. Inspired by the linearity that people exhibit while natural language text reading, we designed local and global gaze-based measures to characterize linearity (left-to-right and top-to-bottom) in reading source code. Unlike natural language text, source code is executable and requires a specific reading approach. To validate these measures, we compared the eye movements of novice and expert programmers who were asked to read and comprehend short snippets of natural language text and Java programs. Our results show that novices read source code less linearly than natural language text. Moreover, experts read code less linearly than novices. These findings indicate that there are specific differences between reading natural language and source code, and suggest that non-linear reading skills increase with expertise. We discuss the implications for practitioners and educators.

KW - eye tracking

KW - novice

KW - expert

KW - eye movement

KW - code reading

U2 - 10.1109/ICPC.2015.36

DO - 10.1109/ICPC.2015.36

M3 - Conference contribution

SP - 255

EP - 265

BT - 2015 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension

PB - IEEE

ER -

Eye movements in code reading: relaxing the linear order

Abstract

Keywords

Documents and Links

Fingerprint

Research output

EMIP: The eye movements in programming dataset

Cite this