The Stores Model of Code Cognition

Program comprehension is perhaps one of the oldest topics within the psychology of programming. It addresses a central issue: how programmers work with and manipulate source code to construct effective software systems. Models can play an important role in understanding the challenges developers and engineers contend with. This paper presents a model of program comprehension, or code cognition, which has been derived from literature found within the disciplines of computing and psychology. Drawing on direct experimentation, this paper argues that a model of code cognition should take account of the visual, spatial and linguistic abilities of developers. The strengths and weaknesses of this model are discussed and further research directions presented

Information Processing Models: Benefits and Limitations

This paper looks at the three main information processing models from the point of view of researchers in confidential human factors databases. It explores conceptual problems with two of these information processing models, and goes on to explore possible advantages of adopting a ‘connectionist’ paradigm. Links between connectionism and ‘situated cognition’ are demonstrated. Practical work carried out using a connectionist/situated cognition model is described, and the way in which the ‘situatedness’ of discourse can influence the kind of data that can be collected is discussed. Finally it is argued that more emphasis should be placed in ergonomics on sociation, situatedness and embodiment, and that this might help to deal with problems faced in creation and interrogating databases: especially as regards the creation of coherent and reliable ‘coding taxonomies’

Perceptual Consciousness, Short-Term Memory, and Overflow: Replies to Beck, Orlandi and Franklin, and Phillips

A reply to commentators -- Jake Beck, Nico Orlandi and Aaron Franklin, and Ian Phillips -- on our paper "Does perceptual consciousness overflow cognitive access?"

Evaluation of Cognitive Architectures for Cyber-Physical Production Systems

Cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) integrate physical and computational resources due to increasingly available sensors and processing power. This enables the usage of data, to create additional benefit, such as condition monitoring or optimization. These capabilities can lead to cognition, such that the system is able to adapt independently to changing circumstances by learning from additional sensors information. Developing a reference architecture for the design of CPPS and standardization of machines and software interfaces is crucial to enable compatibility of data usage between different machine models and vendors. This paper analysis existing reference architecture regarding their cognitive abilities, based on requirements that are derived from three different use cases. The results from the evaluation of the reference architectures, which include two instances that stem from the field of cognitive science, reveal a gap in the applicability of the architectures regarding the generalizability and the level of abstraction. While reference architectures from the field of automation are suitable to address use case specific requirements, and do not address the general requirements, especially w.r.t. adaptability, the examples from the field of cognitive science are well usable to reach a high level of adaption and cognition. It is desirable to merge advantages of both classes of architectures to address challenges in the field of CPPS in Industrie 4.0

The ixiQuarks: merging code and GUI in one creative space

This paper reports on ixiQuarks; an environment of instruments and effects that is built on top of the audio programming language SuperCollider. The rationale of these instruments is to explore alternative ways of designing musical interaction in screen-based software, and investigate how semiotics in interface design affects the musical output. The ixiQuarks are part of external libraries available to SuperCollider through the Quarks system. They are software instruments based on a non- realist design ideology that rejects the simulation of acoustic instruments or music hardware and focuses on experimentation at the level of musical interaction. In this environment we try to merge the graphical with the textual in the same instruments, allowing the user to reprogram and change parts of them in runtime. After a short introduction to SuperCollider and the Quark system, we will describe the ixiQuarks and the philosophical basis of their design. We conclude by looking at how they can be seen as epistemic tools that influence the musician in a complex hermeneutic circle of interpretation and signification

Do consumers really know if the price is right ? Direct measures of references price are their implications for retailing

Reference price research suggest that consumers memorize and recall price information when selecting brands for frequently purchased products. In this study, we show that previous price-knowledge surveys provided imperfect estimates of reference price. Further, we propose to use a combination of price recall, price recognition, and deal recognition to measure representations to memorize prices. In addition we identify consumer and product characteristics that explain the variations in price knowledge.price knowledge; reference price; retailing

Perceptual Pluralism

Perceptual systems respond to proximal stimuli by forming mental representations of distal stimuli. A central goal for the philosophy of perception is to characterize the representations delivered by perceptual systems. It may be that all perceptual representations are in some way proprietarily perceptual and differ from the representational format of thought (Dretske 1981; Carey 2009; Burge 2010; Block ms.). Or it may instead be that perception and cognition always trade in the same code (Prinz 2002; Pylyshyn 2003). This paper rejects both approaches in favor of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perception delivers a multiplicity of representational formats, some proprietary and some shared with cognition. The argument for perceptual pluralism marshals a wide array of empirical evidence in favor of iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations in perception as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) perceptual object representations