一句话：首次通过fMRI比较代码书写与散文书写时的大脑神经表征，揭示代码书写独特的认知过程。
软件工程中书写代码与编辑代码是核心活动，但已有神经科学研究多聚焦于阅读和理解代码，对代码书写背后的人类认知过程仍缺乏系统认识。本文首次利用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）开展人类被试研究，让参与者在脑扫描过程中分别书写代码与散文，并使用全尺寸、fMRI兼容的QWERTY键盘。研究对比了代码书写与散文书写时的神经表征，为揭示代码书写是否依赖与散文书写不同的神经过程提供了直接影像证据。该工作填补了代码书写认知神经机制研究的空白，并为后续编程环境与开发者工具的人因研究奠定基础。
Software engineering involves writing new code or editing existing code. Recent efforts have investigated the neural processes associated with reading and comprehending code --- however, we lack a thorough understanding of the human cognitive processes underlying code writing. While prose reading and writing have been studied thoroughly, that same scrutiny has not been applied to code writing. In this paper, we leverage functional brain imaging to investigate neural representations of code writing in comparison to prose writing. We present the first human study in which participants wrote code and prose while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan, making use of a full-sized fMRI-safe QWERTY keyboard.
DOI 原文 ·
@inproceedings{paperbot5672,
title = {Neurological divide},
author = {Ryan Krueger and Yu Huang and Xinyu Liu and Tyler Santander and Westley Weimer and Kevin Leach},
booktitle = {ICSE},
year = {2020},
doi = {10.1145/3377811.3380348}
}