# Evaluating Graphical Perception with Multimodal LLMs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.04221 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04221/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in MLLM training and visual instruction tuning, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 21 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Apr 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [MLLM training and visual instruction tuning](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/mllm-training-and-visual-instruction-tuning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [VQA: Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.00468/) (2015)
- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [VisionLLM: Large Language Model is also an Open-Ended Decoder for Vision-Centric Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11175/) (2023)
- [V*: Guided Visual Search as a Core Mechanism in Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14135/) (2023)
- [DVQA: Understanding Data Visualizations via Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.08163/) (2018)
- [FigureQA: An Annotated Figure Dataset for Visual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07300/) (2017)
- [ChartLlama: A Multimodal LLM for Chart Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16483/) (2023)
- [MMC: Advancing Multimodal Chart Understanding with Large-scale Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10774/) (2023)
- [Is A Picture Worth A Thousand Words? Delving Into Spatial Reasoning for Vision Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14852/) (2024)
- [KOSMOS-2.5: A Multimodal Literate Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11419/) (2023)
- [ChartAssisstant: A Universal Chart Multimodal Language Model via Chart-to-Table Pre-training and Multitask Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02384/) (2024)
- [Multimodal Reasoning with Multimodal Knowledge Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02030/) (2024)
- [MMEvol: Empowering Multimodal Large Language Models with Evol-Instruct](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05840/) (2024)
- [What Makes for Good Visual Instructions? Synthesizing Complex Visual Reasoning Instructions for Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01487/) (2023)
- [Advancing Multimodal Large Language Models in Chart Question Answering with Visualization-Referenced Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20174/) (2024)
- [Exploring Perceptual Limitation of Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07384/) (2024)
- [M2PT: Multimodal Prompt Tuning for Zero-shot Instruction Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15657/) (2024)
- [Multimodal Large Language Models and Tunings: Vision, Language, Sensors, Audio, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05608/) (2024)
- [Understanding Graphical Perception in Data Visualization through Zero-shot Prompting of Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00257/) (2024)
- [Towards AGI in Computer Vision: Lessons Learned from GPT and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08641/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Can a Neural Encoding Model Replicate an fMRI Visualization Study?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15685/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have remarkably progressed in analyzing and understanding images. Despite these advancements, accurately regressing values in charts remains an underexplored area for MLLMs. For visualization, how do MLLMs perform when applied to graphical perception tasks? Our paper investigates this question by reproducing Cleveland and McGill's seminal 1984 experiment and comparing it against human task performance. Our study primarily evaluates fine-tuned and pretrained models and zero-shot prompting to determine if they closely match human graphical perception. Our findings highlight that MLLMs outperform human task performance in some cases but not in others. We highlight the results of all experiments to foster an understanding of where MLLMs succeed and fail when applied to data visualization.