Examining the role of cognitive load when learning toprogram

Cognitive load is concerned with the amount of mental effort imposed on working memory at an instant of time. Changes in cognitive load cause very small dilations of the pupils. The aim of this paper is to examine the role of cog-nitive load while learning to program through the use of remote eye tracking. Although numerous studies have been carried out to evaluate cognitive load using this approach, very few can be found that have focused on programming comprehension especially with students learning to program for the first time. This study will develop a suite of programming tasks, designed to induce different levels of cognitive load (low to high). The programming tasks will be completed by novice programmers whilst a remote eye tracking system monitors pupil dilation. It is hypothesised that, once environmental factors (ambient light etc) have been controlled, programming tasks designed to induce a high level of cognitive load will result in dilations of the pupils, whilst easier tasks will not result in such a change.