Cognitive Style and Its Effect on the Stages of Programming

Abstract

Computer programming has separate and distinct phases: problem representation, program design, coding, and debugging. It may be that certain cognitive styles and personality traits affect some stages of programming but not others. The purpose of this article is (a) to present a model that suggests the cognitive style and personality traits that are likely to affect programming stages and (b) to empirically investigate one portion of that model. An investigation of 192 college students reveals that the correlation between field-dependence/field-independence and design is significantly higher than the correlation between field-dependence/field-independence and coding, hence empirically validating a portion of a model.