Towards a tool for visualizing pupil dilation linked with source code artifacts

Abstract

Recent eye tracking research in the field of software engineering has proposed novel visualizations linking developer's gazes with the source code artifacts to better understand how developers comprehend source code artifacts potentially consisting of several different files. In addition, it is well established that cognitive processes can be monitored by recording the change in pupil dilation. Recent pupillometry studies in the software engineering field have shown that pupil dilation can be used either as an indicator of cognitive load or task difficulty. We envision to create a tool for visualizing pupil dilation linked to source code artifacts that can help to better understand the cognitive processes of a developer during code comprehension tasks in terms of cognitive load. In this paper, we describe a feasibility study we conducted to enable a more fine-grained analysis of pupil dilation and we demonstrate some preliminary results.