All,
I have been reading papers on the effects of mixing symbol
types, Arabic & Roman, in mental arithmetic.
Gonzalez & Kolers paper "Mental Manipulation of arithmetic symbols"
is a good source.
Such things also occur in C with decimal & hexadecimal (base 16)
literals (based 8 can also occur, but is rarely seen). Many other languages
allow similar base mixing.
I have been unable to find any research looking at mixed bases. In fact
the interesting Arabic/Roman works seems to have petered out after the
mids 80's.
Of course people don't normally mix decimal & hexadecimal in arithmetic
expressions and not usually in bit-wise operations either. But they do
coexist in initializer lists, ie
struct s X = { 3, 0x4e, 8, 0x02, ....
int a[] = { 0x34, 0xa2, 2, 0x08 ...
In the second case our very lazy programmer has left a 0x off the front of
the 2.
The representations 2 and 0x2 and 0x02 having the same value. Without an 0x
on the front, a number just does not look like hexadecimal, at least to me, so
a cognitive switch is needed (so I claim).
Is this really a cognitive switch issue along the lines of Rogers & Monsell
"Costs
of a predictable switch between simple cognitive tasks"?
Any pointers to research on mixed decimal/hexadecimal, or any other base,
research most welcome.
derek
--
Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252
520 667
Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk
- Automatic footer for [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe discuss
To join the announcements list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe announce
To receive a help file, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] help
This list is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
If you have any problems or questions, please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
