The Effect of Diagonal Bar Position in Prohibition Signs on Recognition Efficiency of the Signs

Abstract

AbstractProhibition signs warn people of certain behaviors to avoid danger or risk, so they should be carefully designed. ISO regulated that prohibition signs should be designed with the diagonal bar as foreground of the pictogram. In China, although general guidelines for prohibition signs follow this rule, the guidelines for prohibition traffic signs adopt an opposite design with the bar as background. This study attempts to evaluate the effect of bar position on the recognition efficiency of prohibition signs from the perspective of warning processing. Using paired prohibition signs that had opposite bar positions and controlled familiarity, we conducted the experiment with a within-subject design. In the experiment, participants judged whether the pictures of prohibition signs matched the textual explanation when they were simultaneously displayed on a blank screen. Considering the differences between different participants and signs, we modelled reaction time with a mixed-effects linear model containing random intercepts. The results showed that participants recognized familiar signs more quickly, and for familiar signs, participants recognized the signs with bar as foreground faster than the signs with bar as background. In practice, the findings suggest designing the prohibition signs with bar as foreground to improve the speed of signs recognition.KeywordsProhibition signSign recognitionWarning processingBar position