Effects of label format on knowledge acquisition and perceived readability by younger and older adults

MICHEAL S. WOGALTER WILLIAM J. VIGILANTE

104 citations0/0 files storedErgonomics

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Safety Warnings and Signage Consumer Attitudes and Food Labeling Consumer Packaging Perceptions and Trends

Abstract

This research examines consumers' information acquisition and preference for labels of a simulated over-the-counter (OTC) medication. Twelve otherwise identical OTC drug bottles were compared with different back labels varying in (a) print size, (b) amount of white space between text, and (c) label design (standard vs extended/pull-out). A no back label condition served as a control. Older (mean age=77.7 years) and younger (mean age=21 years) adults were given one of the 12 bottles and asked to perform one of two information acquisition tasks: (a) they examined the bottle for 3 minutes and then completed a questionnaire with the bottle absent, or (b) they answered the same questionnaire while the bottle was present. Afterwards, participants were given all of the bottles and asked to rank them according to perceived readability. The younger adults' information acquisition performance was significantly better than the older adults' for all label conditions except the control condition where both groups' low performance did not differ. Specifically, the older adults' performance was significantly better in the medium and large print conditions than in the small print conditions--with the latter conditions not differing from the control condition. Younger adults showed no performance differences among the different print-size conditions. No substantial effects on knowledge acquisition performance from the white space manipulations were found. However, the perceived readability ranks showed that both groups preferred larger print size and white space. The white space effect was smaller than for print size, particularly for older adults. The extended/pull-out label design was facilitative for older adults in that it allowed the use of larger print. The results suggest that older consumers may be unable to acquire information in the 'fine' print frequently found in various kinds of product literature.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 104 citations exist upstream.

References

1996Cognitive Load While Learning to Use a Computer Program 1978Designing instructional text 1990Comprehension and Memory of Instruction Manual Warnings: Conspicuous Print and Pictorial Icons 1998The Influence of List Format and Category Headers on Age Differences in Understanding Medication Instructions 1979Typographical cues that facilitate comprehension.1999Methodological Techniques for Evaluating Behavioral Intentions and Compliance 1999Enhancing Information Acquisition for Over-the-Counter Medications by Making Better Use of Container Surface Space

Cited by

2018Communication-Human Information Processing (C-HIP) Model 2006Considering the impact of medicine label design characteristics on patient safety 2007Consumer Comprehension of OTC Medication Labels and the Scope for Improvement in Font Size 2014ClereMed: Lessons Learned From a Pilot Study of a Mobile Screening Tool to Identify and Support Adults Who Have Difficulty With Medication Labels

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.