Strategy Choice and Change in Programming

Abstract

This research studied iterative or looping strategy choices and changes, especially between the while-do and repeat-until looping constructs in the PASCAL programming language. The empirical results from the first experiment, in which subjects were free to choose between the two looping alternatives, indicated that most of PASCAL programmers are quite sensitive to the nature of the problems being solved and adaptable in choosing appropriate looping strategies. Another two experiments were performed in which subjects were either forced or induced to use one of the two looping strategies. These two experiments indicated that subjects are quite tenacious in using the appropriate strategy and their performance deteriorates when they are forced to use a different strategy. These results are consistent with results of Reder (1987, 1988), Reder and Ritter (1990), and Siegler and Jenkins (1989) on strategy selection in other domains and with other populations.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1990
Accession Number
ADA225576

Entities

People

  • John R. Anderson
  • Quanfeng Wu

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Cognition
  • Cognitive Science
  • Cognitive Systems Engineering
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Data Analysis
  • Debugging
  • Experimental Design
  • Information Science
  • Language
  • Pascal Programming Language
  • Programming Languages
  • Psychology
  • Software Development
  • Structured Programming
  • Universities

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science.
  • Theoretical Analysis.