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Factors influencing dwell time during source code reading: a large-scale replication experiment

Published: 25 June 2019 Publication History

Abstract

The paper partially replicates and extends a previous study by Busjahn et al. [4] on the factors influencing dwell time during source code reading, where source code element type and frequency of gaze visits are studied as factors. Unlike the previous study, this study focuses on analyzing eye movement data in large open source Java projects. Five experts and thirteen novices participated in the study where the main task is to summarize methods. The results examine semantic line-level information that developers view during summarization. We find no correlation between the line length and the total duration of time spent looking on the line even though it exists between a token's length and the total fixation time on the token reported in prior work. The first fixations inside a method are more likely to be on a method's signature, a variable declaration, or an assignment compared to the other fixations inside a method. In addition, it is found that smaller methods tend to have shorter overall fixation duration for the entire method, but have significantly longer duration per line in the method. The analysis provides insights into how source code's unique characteristics can help in building more robust methods for analyzing eye movements in source code and overall in building theories to support program comprehension on realistic tasks.

References

[1]
Nahla Abid, Bonita Sharif, Natalia Dragan, Hend Alrasheed, and Jonathan Maletic. 2019. Developer Reading Behavior while Summarizing Java Methods: Size and Context Matters. In Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2019, Montreal, QC, Canada May 25--31, 2019. 12 pages to appear.
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Ruven Brooks. 1983. Towards a theory of the comprehension of computer programs. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 1983. 543--554.
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T. Busjahn, R. Bednarik, A. Begel, M. Crosby, J. H. Paterson, C. Schulte, B. Sharif, and S. Tamm. 2015. Eye Movements in Code Reading: Relaxing the Linear Order. In 2015 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension. 255--265.
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Teresa Busjahn, Roman Bednarik, and Carsten Schulte. 2014. What Influences Dwell Time During Source Code Reading?: Analysis of Element Type and Frequency As Factors. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 335--338.
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Drew T. Guarnera, Corey A. Bryant, Ashwin Mishra, Jonathan I. Maletic, and Bonita Sharif. 2018. iTrace: Eye Tracking Infrastructure for Development Environments. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA '18). Article 105, 3 pages.
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Unaizah Obaidellah, Mohammed Al Haek, and Peter C.-H. Cheng. 2018. A Survey on the Usage of Eye-Tracking in Computer Programming. ACM Comput. Surv. 51, 1, Article 5 (Jan. 2018), 58 pages.
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Christopher Palmer and Bonita Sharif. 2016. Towards automating fixation correction for source code. In Proceedings of the Ninth Biennial ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications, ETRA 2016, Charleston, SC, USA, March 14--17, 2016. 65--68.
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Keith Rayner and Susan A Duffy. 1986. Lexical complexity and fixation times in reading: Effects of word frequency, verb complexity, and lexical ambiguity. Memory & cognition 14, 3 (1986), 191--201.
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P. Rodeghero, C. Liu, P. W. McBurney, and C. McMillan. 2015. An Eye-Tracking Study of Java Programmers and Application to Source Code Summarization. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 41, 11 (2015), 1038--1054.
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P. Rodeghero and C. McMillan. 2015. An Empirical Study on the Patterns of Eye Movement during Summarization Tasks. In 2015 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), Vol. 00. 1--10.
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Paige Rodeghero, Collin McMillan, Paul W. McBurney, Nigel Bosch, and Sidney D'Mello. 2014. Improving Automated Source Code Summarization via an Eye-tracking Study of Programmers. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2014). 390--401.
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  • (2023)Assessing the Effect of Programming Language and Task Type on Eye Movements of Computer Science StudentsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/363253024:1(1-38)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2023
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cover image ACM Conferences
ETRA '19: Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications
June 2019
623 pages
ISBN:9781450367097
DOI:10.1145/3314111
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 25 June 2019

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  1. eye tracking study
  2. source code
  3. visual attention distribution

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Analyzing and Interpreting Eye Movements in C++: Using Holistic Models of Image PerceptionProceedings of the 2024 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications10.1145/3649902.3655093(1-7)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
  • (2024)On Eye Tracking in Software EngineeringSN Computer Science10.1007/s42979-024-03045-35:6Online publication date: 26-Jul-2024
  • (2023)Assessing the Effect of Programming Language and Task Type on Eye Movements of Computer Science StudentsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/363253024:1(1-38)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2023
  • (2023)Visual Expertise in Code ReviewsProceedings of the 2023 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications10.1145/3588015.3589189(1-7)Online publication date: 30-May-2023
  • (2023)Identifying Lines and Interpreting Vertical Jumps in Eye Tracking Studies of Reading Text and CodeACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/357935720:2(1-20)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2023
  • (2022)Eyes on Code: A Study on Developers’ Code Navigation StrategiesIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.303206448:5(1692-1704)Online publication date: 1-May-2022
  • (2022)Deja Vu: semantics-aware recording and replay of high-speed eye tracking and interaction data to support cognitive studies of software engineering tasks—methodology and analysesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10209-327:7Online publication date: 1-Dec-2022
  • (2021)Determining Differences in Reading Behavior Between Experts and Novices by Investigating Eye Movement on Source Code Constructs During a Bug Fixing TaskACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications10.1145/3448018.3457424(1-6)Online publication date: 25-May-2021
  • (2020)Can the E-Z Reader Model Predict Eye Movements Over Code? Towards a Model of Eye Movements Over Source CodeACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications10.1145/3379156.3391983(1-4)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2020
  • (2020)Eye-tracking Based Performance Analysis in Error Finding Programming Test2020 15th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE)10.1109/ICCSE49874.2020.9201882(477-482)Online publication date: Aug-2020

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