An Eye Scan Analysis of Accessing Product Warning Information

Abstract

Eye tracking procedures were employed to study eye scan patterns of subjects searching for warning messages in product labels. Thirty-eight alcoholic beverage labels were constructed, 24 of which contained a warning. For each label, subjects indicated whether or not it contained a warning. Salience of the warning was manipulated by the presence or absence of four features which appeared individually or in combination. The features were a pictorial, an icon, color and a border. Of particular interest was the ability to decompose the total time it takes to find the warning in two components: location time and decision time. Location refers to the time it takes to find the area where the warning is, and decision refers to the time it takes to determine if the given information is a warning, as well as the time to make an overt response. The results show that the singular addition of a pictorial, an icon, color or a border did not produce a significant improvement in total time or in location time relative to a warning with no salient features (the baseline warning). The addition of a pictorial did improve decision time compared to the baseline warning. The combination of a pictorial, color and an icon produced a significant decrease in total time, location time and decision time. These results show that salience manipulations affect time to find a warning, as well as time to determine if given information is a warning.