A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective on Memory for Programming Tasks

When faced with frequent interruptions and task-switching, programmers have difficulty keeping relevant task knowledge in their mind. An understanding of how programmers actively manage this knowledge provides a foundation for evaluating cognitive theories and building better tools. Recently, advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging technology has provided new insight into the inner workings of the mind; unfortunately, theories such as program understanding have not been accordingly advanced. In this paper, we review recent findings in cognitive neuroscience and examine the impacts on our theories of how programmers work and the design of programming environments.