Recent research has assessed the automatic influences of road signs upon behaviour through the priming paradigm. This paper reports an initial study designed to measure the effectiveness of road sign priming for road scenes according to the nature of the roadway (rural versus urban) and layout of the road ahead (left bend, right bend or crossroads). Twenty-six participants were shown a series of paired stimuli consisting of a road sign followed by a road scene. They were instructed to ignore the road sign and to make a response to the road scene according to the road layout. Results demonstrated a valid priming effect of road signs for the urban roads only. In addition participants demonstrated difficulty in the processing of crossroad scenes in rural settings. The results are discussed in regard to visual clutter and visual driving cues. For the covering abstract see ITRD E113725 (C 22328 CD-ROM).
Samenvatting