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Mining biometric data to predict programmer expertise and task difficulty

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Abstract

Programming mistakes frequently waste software developers’ time and may lead to the introduction of bugs into their software, causing serious risks for their customers. Using the correlation between various software process metrics and defects, earlier work has traditionally attempted to spot such bug risks. However, this study departs from previous works in examining a more direct method of using psycho-physiological sensors data to detect the difficulty of program comprehension tasks and programmer level of expertise. By conducting a study with 38 expert and novice programmers, we investigated how well an electroencephalography and an eye-tracker can be utilized in predicting programmer expertise (novice/expert) and task difficulty (easy/difficult). Using data from both sensors, we could predict task difficulty and programmer level of expertise with 64.9 and 97.7% precision and 68.6 and 96.4% recall, respectively. The result shows it is possible to predict the perceived difficulty of a task and expertise level for developers using psycho-physiological sensors data. In addition, we found that while using single biometric sensor shows good results, the composition of both sensors lead to the best overall performance.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the ICT R&D Program of MSIP/IITP [Grant Number 2016(B0101-16-0340)]. Development of distribution and diffusion service technology through individual and collective intelligence to digital contents. “This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) Grant funded by the Korea Government(MSIP) (No. R1610941).”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Korea University, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Korea

    Seolhwa Lee, Danial Hooshyar, Hyesung Ji & Heuiseok Lim

  2. Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Korea

    Kichun Nam

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  1. Seolhwa Lee
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  2. Danial Hooshyar
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  3. Hyesung Ji
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Correspondence to Heuiseok Lim.

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Lee, S., Hooshyar, D., Ji, H. et al. Mining biometric data to predict programmer expertise and task difficulty. Cluster Comput 21, 1097–1107 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-017-0746-2

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