Adjacency beats static and dynamic color in bar chart comparison.

IF 1.1 4区心理学 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY, EXPERIMENTAL

I-Perception Pub Date : 2026-09-04 eCollection Date: 2026-09-01 DOI:10.1177/20416695261481745

Koen Rummens, Sofie Beier

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Abstract

Bar charts are among the most popular graph formats when communicating quantitative information. Recent work by Boger and Franconeri (2024, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153, 1699-1704) revealed that the spatial design of simple bar charts can strongly alter which relationships viewers detect or miss. In Experiment 1, we replicated their adjacency advantage, showing that misleading relationships in grouped bar charts are more often detected when in adjacent versus non-adjacent ("interleaved") bars. In Experiment 2, we tested whether color-either static or dynamic-could benefit the detection of interleaved relationships, analogous to the advantage of adjacency in Experiment 1. The two bars containing the misleading relationship were either red or gradually changed from gray to red, with the other two bars in gray. We found no evidence for improved detection with static or dynamic color cues relative to when all bars were uniformly gray. Our findings suggest that the spatial layout of graphs strongly determines which relationships are detected, and reveals limitations of color-based highlighting in guiding our interpretation of bar charts.

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在条形图比较中，邻接色优于静态色和动态色。

条形图是传达定量信息时最流行的图形格式之一。Boger和Franconeri （2024, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153, 1699-1704）最近的研究表明，简单条形图的空间设计可以强烈地改变观看者发现或错过的关系。在实验1中，我们复制了它们的邻接优势，表明分组条形图中的误导关系在相邻和非相邻（“交错”）条形图中更容易被发现。在实验2中，我们测试了颜色（静态或动态）是否有助于检测交错关系，类似于实验1中邻接关系的优势。包含误导关系的两条柱为红色或逐渐由灰色变为红色，其他两条柱为灰色。我们没有发现任何证据表明，当所有的条纹都是均匀的灰色时，使用静态或动态颜色线索可以改善检测。我们的研究结果表明，图形的空间布局在很大程度上决定了哪些关系被检测到，并揭示了基于颜色的高亮在指导我们解释条形图时的局限性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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