The Hazard Perception for the Surrounding Shape of Warning Signs: Evidence From an Event-Related Potentials Study

Abstract

Surrounding shape is a very important component of warning signs. Unlike colors, signal words, and pictorials that can directly convey the surface meaning, the surrounding shapes of warning signs convey warning information somewhat obscurely. Most of the researchers who studied this topic investigated the individuals' hazard perception of the surrounding shapes of warning signs by using questionnaires. In addition, the scholars' points about the role of the surrounding shapes are inconsistent. This study, therefore, decided to use Event-Related Potentials (ERP) technology to explore the impact of the shapes on the perception of warning signs to find the evidences of the hazard perception of the shapes from the electrophysiological perspective. Using the Oddball paradigm, we found four components caused by different shapes of warning signs. Specifically, P200 amplitude characterizes the attraction to attention of surrounding shapes in the early automatic perception stage, the N300 components represented the emotional valance and arousal level, the P300 and the LPP connoted uneasy/unsafe information and reflected the inhibition strength on the uneasy/unsafe information. Experimental data indicated that the shape of UPRIGHT TRIANGLE had larger arousal strength and more negative valence than the shape of CIRCLE. People get stronger negative information from the UPRIGHT TRIANGLE shapes than from the CIRCLE. This finding might be helpful for designing the surrounding shapes of warning signs.

Electrophysiological Correlates of Processing Warning Signs With Different Background Colors: An Event-Related Potentials Investigation

“…Subjects were required to count the number of target stimulus (chairs) in each block in their minds and to report the number upon completion of the block. By this mean, subjects were prompted to focus their attention on the target stimuli, rendering the processing of warning signs task-irrelevant (Ma et al, 2018;Bian et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2020). Data from a subject would be excluded from final analysis if he (or she) got the numbers wrong in more than one block.…”

“…As a type of safety sign, warning sign is a prominent tool used to remind people of potential hazards and instruct them to behave safely. A lot of effort has been devoted to the design and effectiveness of warning signs in the past decades (Chan and Ng, 2010;Ma et al, 2010Ma et al, , 2018Chan and Ng, 2012;Bian et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2020). In this research trend, the color of warning signs has also received considerable attention because color is essential when the textual message is restricted (Chapanis, 1994;Braun et al, 1995;Borade et al, 2008;Siu et al, 2017;Chen et al, 2020).…”

“…Prior research has shown that ERPs are conducive to understanding how people process safety signs (Fu et al, 2017;Ma et al, 2018;Lu and Hou, 2019;Bian et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2020). For instance, warning signs with higher hazard levels are associated with increased N1, N2, and P300/LPP components (Ma et al, 2010(Ma et al, , 2018Fu et al, 2017;Bian et al, 2020), and a reduced P2 component (Ma et al, 2018;Bian et al, 2020). In addition, ERPs have also been employed to study the cognitive processing of different colors (Holmes et al, 2008;Cano et al, 2009;Cao et al, 2010;Lu et al, 2010).…”

“…In this study, we attempts to extend previous studies on warning signs by investigating how people perceive warning signs with different background colors with an implicit paradigm. Recent research suggests that an implicit paradigm that does not require participants to explicitly pay attention to the safety signs is feasible to study how people perceive these signs, since they might be processed implicitly in many real life cases (Ma et al, 2018;Bian et al, 2020). Such a paradigm is not only helpful in examining the automatic information processing driven by stimuli, but also in avoiding a "relevancefor-task" effect (Bian et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2020).…”

Children and Adults' Perception of Signal Colours, Symbols, and Words in the Context of Cybersecurity Warnings

“…Exploring the impact of shapes on the perception of warning signs, Ma et al [37] found that people have a stronger negative interpretation from the upright triangle than from the circle.…”