Computer programming and other design tasks have often been characterized as a set of
non-interacting subtasks. In principle, it may be possible to separate these subtasks, but in …

Abstract Experts differ from non-experts in how they acquire knowledge, solve problems and
process information. In the study reported here three levels of program organization …

Recent research using professional programmers suggests that knowledge of the
application domain plays a major role in the cognitive processes they use to understand …

Much of the literature concerned with understanding the nature of programming skill has
focused explicitly upon the declarative aspects of programmers' knowledge. This literature …

Department of Psychology Rutgers–The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, NJ
08903 koeneman@ paul. rutgers. edu Program comprehension is a complex problem …

In this paper, we describe a study that tests the following hypothesis: A programming
language construct that has a closer" cognitive fit" with an individual's preferred cognitive …

We suggest that expert programmers have and use two types of programming knowledge: 1)
programming plans, which are generic program fragments that represent stereotypic action …

A sufficiency theory is presented of the process by which a computer programmer attempts
to comprehend a program. The theory is intended to explain four sources of variation in …

Differences in the comprehensibility of programming notations can arise because their
syntax can make them cognitively unwieldy in a generalized way (Mayer, 1976), because all …

Two complementary processes may be distinguished in learning a complex cognitive skill
such as computer programming. First, automation offers task-specific procedures that may …