Shedding Light on the Graph Schema

The current theories of graph comprehension have posited the graph schema as providing us the necessary knowledge to interpret any graph type. Yet, little is known about the nature of the graph schema, and no empirical data exist showing that there actually is a graph schema. In experiment 1 we show evidence that a graph schema does exist, and that graph schemas are not specific to each and every graph type. In experiments 2 and 3 we show that there is a different graph schema for typical and atypical graphs. We interpret these findings as evidence for a prototypical graph schema