Investigating the Impact of Forgetting in Software Development

TL;DR

This study investigates how forgetting affects software development by conducting a controlled experiment to assess the influence of recency and frequency of interaction on memory retention and task performance.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the impact of forgetting in software development and explores how exposure frequency and recency influence developers' memory and performance.

Findings

Additional exposure improves performance in final tasks

Recency and frequency of interaction significantly affect forgetting

Participants' perceptions align with measured memory performance

Abstract

Context: Forgetting is defined as a gradual process of losing information. Even though there are many studies demonstrating the effect of forgetting in software development, to the best of our knowledge, no study explores the impact of forgetting in software development using a controlled experiment approach. Objective: We would like to provide insights on the impact of forgetting in software development projects. We want to examine whether the recency & frequency of interaction impact forgetting in software development. Methods: We will conduct an experiment that examines the impact of forgetting in software development. Participants will first do an initial task. According to their initial task performance, they will be assigned to either the experiment or the control group. The experiment group will then do two additional tasks to enhance their exposure to the code. Both groups will then do a final task to see if additional exposure to the code benefits the experiment group's performance in the final task. Finally, we will conduct a survey and a recall task with the same participants to collect data about their perceptions of forgetting and quantify their memory performance, respectively.