Cognition in Software Engineering: A Taxonomy and Survey of a Half-Century of Research

Cognition plays a fundamental role in most software engineering activities. This article provides taxonomy of cognitive concepts and survey the literature since beginning Software Engineering discipline. The comprises top-level perception, attention, memory, load, reasoning, biases, knowledge, social cognition, control, errors, procedures to assess them both qualitatively quantitatively. useful tool filter existing studies, classify new support researchers getting familiar with (sub) area. In survey, we systematically collected analysed 311 scientific papers spanning five decades classified using from taxonomy. Our analysis shows that developed areas research correspond four life-cycle stages, requirements, design, construction, maintenance. Most is quantitative focuses on reasoning. Overall, state art appears fragmented when viewed perspective cognition. There lack use would represent coherent picture processes active specific tasks. Accordingly, discuss gap each concept provide recommendations for future research.