I was interested in research on this as well, just googling I found http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/cetuss/Events/2005-12/program/Beth.pdf http://www.it.uu.

I was interested in research on this as well, just googling I found http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/cetuss/Events/2005-12/program/Beth.pdf http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/cetuss/Events/2005-12/pro... which studies how students go about tracing a piece of code. It doesn't go into learning techniques, but categorizes the techniques first year students use to trace code (which they say is often poorly done). It seems interesting base level research to start with. It was kind of interesting to monitor my own mind when I traced the example code to see how I went about it also.