An experimental validation of control structure diagrams

Recently one of the first in a series of planned comprehension experiments was performed to measure the effect of the control structure diagram (CSD), reverse engineered from source code, on program comprehensibility. Computer science students in an object oriented programming course were asked to respond to questions regarding the structure and execution of a source code module written in Java. Statistical analysis of the data collected from this experiment revealed that the CSD was highly significant in enhancing the subjects´ performance in this program comprehension task. The results of this initial experiment along with the planned follow-on experiments promise to shed light on fundamental questions regarding the effect of software visualizations on program comprehensibility