Differential mental representation of warning traffic signs in Latin-America

Abstract

In spite of the measures that governments implement, 1.24 million people still die in vehicle accidents (World Health Organization (WHO) 2013). The overload of attention has been pointed out as one of the main factors in provoking crashes (Young and Stanton 2002). Some theoretical models have explained the relationship between attention and movement (see Vilchez 2013, for a review). The particular meaning that attentional cues had in a context is the cornerstone of the attractive/repulsive positional effect on movement found in the literature (e.g. Vilchez and Tornay 2012; Vilchez 2015, 2017a). The present study means a comparison between citizens of two different Latin-American countries–Chile (Vilchez 2017b) and Ecuador—in their representation of warning traffic signs.