Exploring the relationship between novice programmer confusion and achievement
ACII'11 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Affective computing and intelligent interaction - Volume Part I
Assembling a synthetic emotion mediator for quick decision making during acute stress
Proceedings of the 30th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics
Towards estimating computer users' mood from interaction behaviour with keyboard and mouse
Frontiers of Computer Science: Selected Publications from Chinese Universities
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There is much research that shows people’s mood can affect their activities. This paper argues that this also applies to programmers, especially their debugging. Literature-based framework is presented linking programming with various cognitive activities as well as linking cognitive activities with moods. Further, the effect of mood on debugging was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, programmers (n = 72) saw short movie clips selected for their ability to provoke specific moods. Afterward, they completed a debugging test. Results showed the video clips had a significant effect on programmers’ debugging performance; especially, there was a significant difference after watching low- and high-arousal-evoking video clips. In the second experiment, programmers’ mood was manipulated by asking participants (n = 19) to dry run algorithms for at least 16 min. They performed some physical exercises before continuing dry running algorithms again. The results showed a significant increase in arousal and valence that coincided with an improvement in programmers’ task performance after the physical exercises. Together, this suggests that programmers’ moods influence some programming tasks such as debugging.