ABSTRACT
Our general aim is to study the cognitive problems encountered by students in their acquisition of programming concepts. In this paper we focus our attention on the concept of variable and its use in problem-solving by novice students (15-16 year) who had previously followed a didactical experience. A set of incomplete program text in which one or more lines have been left blank is presented to students at the end of teaching sessions. The students were asked to complete these lines. The results are discussed in terms of the nature of the solution given by the students, the properties of the conceptual field and the way in which these concepts were introduced.
