Mental Representations Constructed by Experts and Novices in Object-Oriented Program Comprehension [chapter]

Jean-Marie Burkhardt, Françoise Détienne, Susan Wiedenbeck
1997 Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '97  
Previous studies on program comprehension were carried out largely in the context of procedural languages. Our purpose is to develop and evaluate a cognitive model of object-oriented (00) program understanding. Our model is based on the van Dijk and Kintsch's model of text understanding (1983). One key aspect of this theoretical approach is the distinction between two kinds of representation the reader might construct from a text: the textbase and the situation model. On the basis of results of
more » ... an experiment we have conducted, we evaluate the cognitive validity of this distinction in 00 program understanding. We examine how the construction of these two representations is differentially affected by the programmer's expertise and how they evolve differentially over time.
doi:10.1007/978-0-387-35175-9_55 fatcat:su26z6mtknby3at25f7iyby7yi