Evaluating gender difference on algorithmic problems using eye-tracker

Abstract

Gender differences in programming comprehension has been a topic of discussion in recent years. We conducted an eye-tracking study on 51(21 female, 30 male) computer science undergraduate university students to examine their cognitive processes in pseudocode comprehension. We aim to identify their reading strategies and eye gaze behavior on the comprehension of pseudocodes in terms of performance and visual effort when solving algorithmic problems of varying difficulty levels. Each student completed a series of tasks requiring them to rearrange randomized pseudocode statements in a correct order for the problem presented. Our results indicated that the speed of analyzing the problems were faster among male students, although female students fixated longer in understanding the problem requirements. In addition, female students more commonly fixated on indicative verbs (i.e., prompt, print), while male students fixated more on operational statements (i.e., loops, variables calculations, file handling).