Susceptibility to High-Fidelity Misinformation: An Eye-Tracking Analysis

Authors

• Yasasi Abeysinghe, Old Dominion UniversityFollow
• Gavindya Jayawardena, University of Texas at Austin
• Enkelejda Kasneci, Technical University of Munich
• Sampath Jayarathna, Old Dominion UniversityFollow

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1145/3797246.3806224

Publication Title

ETRA '26: Proceedings of the 2026 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications

Pages

75

Conference Name

ETRA '26: 2026 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications

Abstract

With the rise of online misinformation and AI-generated text, understanding human perception of news truthfulness is critical. In this study, we examine visual attention and cognitive processing using eye-tracking measures as individuals read fake and real news articles sharing nearly identical structure and imagery, differing only in subtle textual changes. Using the public FakeNewsPerception dataset, we analyze advanced gaze measures, including scanpaths, AOI transitions, and luminance-corrected pupil measures, beyond basic gaze features, in relation to news truthfulness and perceived believability. Results show that, given the high fidelity of the fake news, readers exhibited comparable visual scanning patterns, attention allocation across AOIs, and cognitive load regardless of truthfulness and perceived believability of news. Interestingly, when participants believed a news item, they demonstrated lower focal attention than when uncertain or disbelieving, suggesting that prior belief reduces visual inspection. These findings, supported by behavioral analysis, may help explain human susceptibility to high-fidelity misinformation.

Rights

© 2026 The Authors.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Original Publication Citation

Abeysinghe, Y., Jayawardena, G., Kasneci, E., & Jayarathna, S. (2026). Susceptibility to high-fidelity misinformation: An eye-tracking analysis.In A. Chetouani, A. Vilanueva, A. Bruno, & R. Echeverria (Eds.), ETRA '26: 2026 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (Article 75). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3797246.3806224

Repository Citation

Abeysinghe, Y., Jayawardena, G., Kasneci, E., & Jayarathna, S. (2026). Susceptibility to high-fidelity misinformation: An eye-tracking analysis.In A. Chetouani, A. Vilanueva, A. Bruno, & R. Echeverria (Eds.), ETRA '26: 2026 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (Article 75). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3797246.3806224

ORCID

0000-0002-5114-9732 (Abeysinghe), 0000-0002-4879-7309 (Jayarathna)