Co-ordination of multiple external representations during Java program debugging

Java program debugging was investigated in computer science students who used a software debugging environment (SDE) that provided concurrently displayed, adjacent, multiple and linked representations consisting of the program code, a visualisation of the program, and its output. The aim of this investigation was to address questions such as ´To what extent do programmers use each type of representation?´, ´Are particular patterns of representation use associated with superior debugging performance?´, ´Are graphical representations more helpful to Java programmers than textual ones?´ and ´Are representations that highlight data structure more useful than those that highlight control-flow for Java debugging?.