Can LLM Code Explanations Adapt to Diverse Problem-Solvers' Needs?

Andrew Anderson, David Piorkowski, Justin Weisz, Margaret Burnett, Kush Varshney

Large language model (LLM) code explanations can support people in solving code-related problems, yet prior work has shown that people have diverse problem-solving styles. If explanations fail to meet people's problem-solving needs, they may be less productive in their occupations and miss opportunities to learn and grow. Although some research has examined how LLMs can adapt their outputs to a user's age or expertise, no prior work has examined how LLMs can adapt their code explanations to people's problem-solving styles. To address this gap, we developed prompts from an established inclusive design method that considers 5 types of problem-solving styles, and we generated 1,072 code explanations from six open-weight LLMs. Using natural language processing techniques, we uncovered a taxonomy of 13 linguistic adaptations, with each adaptation supported by evidence from the literature, the prompts, or the LLMs' outputs. They also show which LLMs adapted their code explanations more frequently than others. This paper is the first to investigate problem-solving style adaptations in LLM code explanation, contributing two problem-solving adaptation approaches: declarative statements for each adaptation and 10 problem-solving style prompts.