From Scores to Strategies: Towards Gaze-Informed Diagnostic Assessment for Visualization Literacy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a gaze-informed approach to visualization literacy assessment, capturing cognitive processes and strategies beyond correctness to enable more nuanced understanding of reader proficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method integrating gaze metrics with literacy scores to assess comprehension strategies, moving beyond traditional correctness-based evaluations.

Findings

Gaze metrics reveal cognitive load invisible to accuracy.

Gaze data reflect attention strategies linked to proficiency.

Proposed assessments distinguish fluent from labored comprehension.

Abstract

Visualization literacy assessments typically rely on correctness to classify performance, providing little evidence about how readers arrive at their answers. We argue that gaze can address this gap as an implicit process signal that complements standardized tests without sacrificing their scalability. Synthesizing findings from visualization and related research, we show that gaze metrics capture cognitive load invisible to accuracy and response time, and reflect strategy differences in attention allocation that track proficiency. We propose assessments that integrate literacy scores with gaze-derived process indicators - component-level attention profiles, integration frequency, and viewing path dispersion - to distinguish fluent comprehension from labored success. This would shift literacy assessment from binary classification toward nuanced characterization of how readers navigate, integrate, and coordinate information across chart components. A roadmap identifies open challenges in empirical grounding, generalizability, assessment design, and practical feasibility.