Increased Comprehension of Warning Pictorials with Color Highlighting

Abstract

Although symbols or pictorials are increasingly being used to communicate warning information, people’s comprehension of them is not guaranteed and sometimes can be quite low. The current study sought to determine whether adding colored highlighting to the relevant components of a pictorial benefits comprehension of the warning. There were three highlighting conditions: more relevant parts were highlighted, less relevant parts were highlighted, or no highlighting. Each participant was shown pictorials in each of the three highlighting conditions and asked to write a short description about what each pictorial communicates. The results showed that participants were more likely to correctly understand the intended conceptual meaning of pictorials when the most relevant parts were highlighted in comparison to the other two conditions. Highlighting less relevant parts led to poorer comprehension than no highlighting at all. Appropriately color highlighting relevant parts of complex pictorial symbols could be a useful method of enhancing comprehension.