Norman Peitek

Publications

37 publications, 1'000+ citations, h-index 13 (Google Scholar, October 2026). Also on DBLP and ORCID.

† co-advised doctoral student · ‡ supervised thesis student · * joint first authors

Journal Articles

  1. On the Influence of the Baseline in Neuroimaging Experiments on Program Comprehension Annabelle Bergum†, Norman Peitek, Maurice Rekrut, Janet Siegmund, and Sven Apel ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 35(3):83, 2026 TOSEM 2026 PDF DOI
  2. Fixation-Related Potentials Reveal that Confusing Program Code Elicits a Late Frontal Positivity Annabelle Bergum†, Anna-Maria Maurer†, Norman Peitek, Regine Bader, Axel Mecklinger, Vera Demberg, Janet Siegmund, and Sven Apel Scientific Reports, 16:16833, 2026 Sci. Rep. 2026 PDF DOI
  3. The Effect of Comments on Program Comprehension: An Eye-Tracking Study Youssef Abdelsalam†, Norman Peitek, Annabelle Bergum†, and Sven Apel Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE), 31(4):94, 2026 EMSE 2026 PDF DOI
  4. Utilizing Anatomical Information for Signal Detection in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Norman Peitek, André Brechmann, Karsten Tabelow, and Thorsten Dickhaus F1000Research, 14:1019, 2025 F1000Research 2025 PDF DOI
  5. Mastering Variation in Human Studies: The Role of Aggregation Janet Siegmund, Norman Peitek, Sven Apel, and Norbert Siegmund ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 30(1):2, 2021 TOSEM 2021 PDF DOI
  6. Studying Programming in the Neuroage: Just a Crazy Idea? Janet Siegmund, Norman Peitek, André Brechmann, Chris Parnin, and Sven Apel Communications of the ACM, 63(6):30–34, 2020 CACM 2020 DOI
  7. A Look into Programmers' Heads Norman Peitek, Janet Siegmund, Sven Apel, Christian Kästner, Chris Parnin, Anja Bethmann, Thomas Leich, Gunter Saake, and André Brechmann IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 46(4):442–462, 2020 TSE 2020 PDF DOI

Conference and Workshop Papers

  1. Harnessing Hype to Teach Empirical Thinking: An Experience With AI Coding Assistants Marvin Wyrich*, Norman Peitek*, Kallistos Weis, and Sven Apel Proc. International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering – Software Engineering Education Track (FSE-SEET), pp. 1101–1111, ACM, 2026. *Joint first authors FSE-SEET 2026 PDF DOI
  2. Eye-Tracking Insights into the Effects of Type Annotations and Identifier Naming Nils Alznauer‡, Norman Peitek, Youssef Abdelsalam†, Annabelle Bergum†, Marvin Wyrich, and Sven Apel Proc. International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), pp. 85–96, ACM, 2026 ICPC 2026 PDF DOI
  3. Are Humans and LLMs Confused by the Same Code? An Empirical Study on Fixation-Related Potentials and LLM Perplexity Youssef Abdelsalam†, Norman Peitek, Anna-Maria Maurer†, Mariya Toneva, and Sven Apel Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 2609–2621, ACM, 2026 ICSE 2026 PDF DOI
  4. Data Analysis Tools Affect Outcomes of Eye-Tracking Studies Timon Dörzapf‡, Norman Peitek, Marvin Wyrich, and Sven Apel Proc. International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), pp. 96–106, ACM, 2024 ESEM 2024 PDF DOI
  5. Correlates of Programmer Efficacy and Their Link to Experience: A Combined EEG and Eye-Tracking Study Norman Peitek, Annabelle Bergum†, Maurice Rekrut, Jonas Mucke, Matthias Nadig, Chris Parnin, Janet Siegmund, and Sven Apel Proc. Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pp. 120–131, ACM, 2022 ESEC/FSE 2022 PDF DOI
  6. Program Comprehension and Code Complexity Metrics: An fMRI Study Norman Peitek, Sven Apel, Chris Parnin, André Brechmann, and Janet Siegmund Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 524–536, IEEE, 2021 ICSE 2021 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award PDF DOI
  7. What Drives the Reading Order of Programmers? An Eye Tracking Study Norman Peitek, Janet Siegmund, and Sven Apel Proc. International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), pp. 342–353, ACM, 2020 ICPC 2020 PDF DOI
  8. CodersMUSE: Multi-Modal Data Exploration of Program-Comprehension Experiments Norman Peitek, Sven Apel, André Brechmann, Chris Parnin, and Janet Siegmund Proc. International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), pp. 126–129, IEEE, 2019 ICPC 2019 Best Tool Demo Award PDF DOI
  9. Indentation: Simply a Matter of Style or Support for Program Comprehension? Jennifer Bauer‡, Janet Siegmund, Norman Peitek, Johannes C. Hofmeister, and Sven Apel Proc. International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), pp. 154–164, IEEE, 2019 ICPC 2019 PDF DOI
  10. Simultaneous Measurement of Program Comprehension with fMRI and Eye Tracking: A Case Study Norman Peitek, Janet Siegmund, Chris Parnin, Sven Apel, Johannes C. Hofmeister, and André Brechmann Proc. International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), pp. 24:1–24:10, ACM, 2018 ESEM 2018 PDF DOI
  11. Toward Conjoint Analysis of Simultaneous Eye-Tracking and fMRI Data for Program-Comprehension Studies Norman Peitek, Janet Siegmund, Chris Parnin, Sven Apel, and André Brechmann Proc. International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP), pp. 1:1–1:5, ACM, 2018 EMIP 2018 PDF DOI
  12. Beyond Gaze: Preliminary Analysis of Pupil Dilation and Blink Rates in an fMRI Study of Program Comprehension Norman Peitek, Janet Siegmund, Chris Parnin, Sven Apel, and André Brechmann Proc. International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP), pp. 4:1–4:5, ACM, 2018 EMIP 2018 PDF DOI
  13. A Neuro-Cognitive Perspective of Program Comprehension Norman Peitek Companion Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Doctoral Symposium, pp. 496–499, ACM, 2018 ICSE 2018 PDF DOI
  14. Measuring Neural Efficiency of Program Comprehension Janet Siegmund, Norman Peitek, Chris Parnin, Sven Apel, Johannes C. Hofmeister, Christian Kästner, Andrew Begel, Anja Bethmann, and André Brechmann Proc. Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pp. 140–150, ACM, 2017 ESEC/FSE 2017 PDF DOI

Preprints under Review or Revision

  1. Neural Signatures of Programming Expertise: Classifying Programmer Skill Levels Using EEG Data Maurice Rekrut, Mahima Mahabaleshwar Acharya‡, Taisiia Ulianova, Norman Peitek, Annabelle Bergum†, Mariya Toneva, Sven Apel, and Antonio Krüger arXiv:2606.30879, 2026. Under revision at IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (TCDS) arXiv PDF DOI
  2. From Restructuring to Stabilization: A Large-Scale Experiment on Iterative Code Readability Refactoring with Large Language Models Norman Peitek, Julia Hess‡, and Sven Apel arXiv:2602.21833, 2026. Under revision at ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) arXiv PDF DOI
  3. Predicting Program Comprehension with Foundation Models of Human Cognition Yannick Lehmen†, Marvin Wyrich, Anna-Maria Maurer†, Norman Peitek, and Sven Apel arXiv:2607.11372, 2026. Under review arXiv PDF DOI
  4. A Mechanistic Lens on Semantic Conflicts: Using Activation Patching to Understand LLM Behavior Youssef Abdelsalam†, Norman Peitek, Anna-Maria Maurer†, Marvin Wyrich, and Sven Apel arXiv:2607.05587, 2026. Under review arXiv PDF DOI

Dissertation and Book Chapter

  1. A Neuro-Cognitive Perspective of Program Comprehension Norman Peitek PhD thesis, Chemnitz University of Technology, 2022 PhD thesis University Dissertation Award PDF
  2. A Practical Guide to Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging with Simultaneous Eye Tracking for Cognitive Neuroimaging Research Michael Hanke, Sebastiaan Mathôt, Eduard Ort, Norman Peitek, Jörg Stadler, and Adina Wagner Spatial Learning and Attention Guidance (Neuromethods, vol. 151), Springer, pp. 291–305, 2020 Book chapter DOI

Other Publications

  1. Unexpected but Informative: Frontal Positivity Elicited by Confusing Program Code Mirrors Natural Language Processing Annabelle Bergum†, Anna-Maria Maurer†, Norman Peitek, Regine Bader, Axel Mecklinger, Vera Demberg, Janet Siegmund, and Sven Apel Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP), 2026. Conference abstract AMLaP 2026 PDF
  2. Tapping into the Natural Language System with Artificial Languages when Learning Programming Elisa Madeleine Hartmann, Annabelle Bergum†, Dominik Gorgosch, Norman Peitek, Sven Apel, and Janet Siegmund arXiv:2402.01657, 2024 arXiv PDF DOI
  3. Eine neurokognitive Perspektive auf Programmverständnis Norman Peitek Ausgezeichnete Informatikdissertationen 2022 (Band D23), Gesellschaft für Informatik, pp. 211–220, 2023 GI 2023 PDF
  4. Program Comprehension and Code Complexity Metrics: A Replication Package of an fMRI Study Norman Peitek, Sven Apel, Chris Parnin, André Brechmann, and Janet Siegmund Proc. IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion (ICSE-Companion), pp. 168–169, 2021 ICSE-Companion 2021 DOI
  5. Understanding Comprehension of Iterative and Recursive Programs with Remote Eye Tracking Arooba Aqeel, Norman Peitek, Sven Apel, Jonas Mucke, and Janet Siegmund Proc. Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG), 2021 PPIG 2021 PDF
  6. Neural Efficiency of Top-Down Program Comprehension Norman Peitek, Janet Siegmund, Chris Parnin, Sven Apel, Johannes C. Hofmeister, Christian Kästner, Andrew Begel, Anja Bethmann, and André Brechmann Software Engineering (SE), Lecture Notes in Informatics, pp. 151–152, 2018 SE 2018 PDF
  7. Enhancing fMRI Studies of Program Comprehension with Eye-Tracking Norman Peitek, Janet Siegmund, and André Brechmann Proc. International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP), pp. 22–23, 2017 EMIP 2017
  8. On the Nature of Programmer Expertise Chris Parnin, Janet Siegmund, and Norman Peitek Proc. Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG), pp. 109–118, 2017 PPIG 2017 PDF
  9. Comparing Novice and Expert Eye Movements during Program Comprehension Johannes C. Hofmeister, Jennifer Bauer‡, Janet Siegmund, Sven Apel, and Norman Peitek Proc. International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP), pp. 17–18, 2017 EMIP 2017
  10. GeoPointing on Indoor Maps: Enhancing Compass Sensor Accuracy to Enable Interactive Digital Object Selection in Smartphone-Based Map Applications Robert Neumann, Norman Peitek, and Juan José Cuadrado-Gallego Proc. ACM International Symposium on Mobility Management and Wireless Access (MobiWac), pp. 63–70, 2012 MobiWac 2012 DOI