International Road Signs: Interpretability and Training Techniques

Abstract

The present study was conducted to examine the difficulties military drivers were having in passing the road sign section of their European driver's test. Drivers in a U.S. Army armor battalion were instructed on international road signs according to one of the following techniques: 1) Sign Only, 2) Sign Elaboration, or 3) Standard Lecture instruction. In the Sign Only condition slides of the 128 road signs were presented individually for ten seconds each, during which time the name of the sign was pronounced twice. In the Sign Elaboration condition, in addition to the name of the slide, a mnemonic cue was presented to facilitate recognition of the sign. The Standard Lecture instruction consisted of a platform lecture supplemented with training aids. No statistically significant differences were obtained among conditions during either training or criterion testing. Error rates for individual signs varied from 0 to 86 percent during training, and from 0 to 32 percent during criterion testing. These data call into question the ready interpretability of some international road signs. The interpretability of individual signs appeared to be a joint function of both prior familiarity with the sign and the concreteness of the pictorial representation.