An Experimental Study Towards Investigating the Effect of Working Memory Capacity on Complex Diagram Understandability

Abstract

This study investigates whether working memory (WM) capacity affects the understandability of complex diagrams and if so, whether WM training has a positive effect on their comprehensibility. Two experiments were conducted with computer science students. In the first experiment, we collected eye-tracking data while participants performed comprehension tasks on an activity diagram. In the second experiment, the participants completed WM training, before and after their comprehension scores were measured. The results showed that working memory capacity can positively affect the understandability of complex diagrams, but it provided no conclusive evidence for the effectiveness of working memory training.