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These goals require people to extract complex and interconnected data patterns. Prior perceptual studies of visualization effectiveness have focused on low\u2010level tasks, such as estimating statistical quantities, and have recently explored high\u2010level comprehension of visualization. Despite the growing use of Large Language Models (LLMs) as visualization interpreters, how their interpretations relate to human understanding or what reasoning processes underlie their responses remains insufficiently understood. In this work, we explore LLMs' comprehension of visualization, examining the alignment between designers' communicative goals and what their audience sees. We have conducted a qualitative study to investigate the gap between human interpretative strategies and the reasoning pathways of LLMs across three types of visualizations, line graphs, bar graphs, and scatterplots, to identify the high\u2010level patterns generated by LLMs using three prompt conditions. Our analysis results indicate that LLMs exhibit a consistent interpretative strategy that remains unchanged across prompt constraints. Furthermore, we observe two distinct approaches: humans naturally synthesize data into trend\u2010centric narratives, whereas LLMs persist with a structural enumeration of comparisons and numerical ranges. Lastly, we see LLMs achieve visualization comprehension through mechanisms distinct from human intuition, pointing to critical challenges and new opportunities for visualization design.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1111\/cgf.70450","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,11]],"date-time":"2026-06-11T11:12:55Z","timestamp":1781176375000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["How Do LLMs See Charts? 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