recommended
Borkin, M. A., Bylinskii, Z., Kim, N. W., Bainbridge, C. M., Yeh, C. S., Borkin, D., ... & Oliva, A. (2016). Beyond memorability: Visualization recognition and recall. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 22(1), 519-528. (ncsu)
Hullman, J., & Diakopoulos, N. (2011). Visualization rhetoric: Framing effects in narrative visualization. Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on, 17(12), 2231-2240. (ncsu)
Bateman, S., Mandryk, R. L., Gutwin, C., Genest, A., McDine, D., & Brooks, C. (2010, April). Useful junk? The effects of visual embellishment on comprehension and memorability of charts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2573-2582). (doi)
Pousman, Z., Stasko, J. T., & Mateas, M. (2007). Casual information visualization: Depictions of data in everyday life. Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on, 13(6), 1145-1152. (ncsu)
optional
Borkin, M. A., Vo, A. A., Bylinskii, Z., Isola, P., Sunkavalli, S., Oliva, A., & Pfister, H. (2013). What makes a visualization memorable?. Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on, 19(12), 2306-2315. (ncsu)
Winkielman, P., Schwarz, N., Reber, R., & Fazendeiro, T. A. (2000). Affective and Cognitive Consequences of Visual Fluency: When Seeing is Easy on the Mind. Visual Persuasion. (pdf)
Tversky, B. (2011). Visualizing thought. Topics in Cognitive Science, 3(3), 499-535. (ncsu)