Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Misleading visualizations are increasingly prevalent, with a surge in their negative impact on data interpretation, often leading to misunderstandings and poor decision-making. To address this issue, we investigate the impact of informative feedback within perceptual training targeting misleading visualizations. Our results show that informative feedback significantly enhances viewers' perceptual skills, improving both accuracy and efficiency in interpreting misleading data visualizations. Additionally, participants demonstrated a transfer effect, applying their developed perceptual skills to novel misleading visualizations beyond those encountered during training. These findings highlight the potential of perceptual training with informative feedback to strengthen viewers' resistance to misleading data visualizations, offering valuable insights for educational practices aimed at fostering viewers' resistance to misleading data visualizations.