Do Function Tables Affect Reading Process of Timing Diagram of Digital Sequential Logic Circuits? Evidence from Eye Movements

摘要

Understanding the process of reading timing diagram of digital sequential logic circuits (T-DSLC) can not only find students’ reading difficulties but also improve teachers’ teaching strategies. This pilot study used an eye-tracker to record 9 participants’ eye movement data of reading T-DSLC. The authors used the data to analyze how the differences of function tables’ elements were related to the participants’ reading timing diagrams and to understand their processes of reading by analyzing of the numbers of fixations (NOF) and the total contact time (TCT). The analyses of NOF and TCT showed significant differences of gazing at all types of region of interest (ROI) when function tables were not provided to the novices; however no differences were found when function tables provided to them. The behavior of logic regressive fixations occurred when the novices had difficulty decoding, but the experts did not have such behavior; therefore teaching students how to read and use function tables should be considered an instructional emphasis. This paper proposes a novel finding that function tables can influence the process of reading T-DSLC. This preliminary eyetracking evidence is the result of this pilot study which is a starting point for many future researches.