Proceedings of the 13th Triennial Congress of the International Ergonomics Association, /EA '97, 3, 353-355. Connoted Hazard of Spanish and English Warning Signal Words, Colors, and Symbols by Native Spanish Language Users. M. S. Wogalter A, L. J. FrederickB, 0. L. Herrera A,A. B. MagumoA A Department of Psychology, 640 Poe Hall, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801 USA B Department of Safety and Environmental Management, College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506-6070 USA 1. Introduction Signal words are used on signs, tags and labels for the purpose of quickly conveying the level of hazard to persons at risk. Several studies in recent years have investigated the connoted hazard of signal words such as DANGER and CAUTION (Bresnahan and Bryk, 1975; Chapanis, 1994; Dunlap et al. 1986; Leonard et al. 1986; Wogalter et al. 1994, 1995; Wogalter and Silver, 1990, 1995). All of these studies have used English language terms only.. There has been increasing interest .in the posting of multi-lingual warnings in locales where one would expect the population to benefit. The Spanish language has particular relevance in the U. S., where there is a growing population that uses Spanish exclusively. To develop such warnings for Spanish language users, warning designers must consider which signal words are appropriate. Wogalter and Silver (1995) showed that a certain subset of words was appropriate (based on hazard connotation and understandability measures) for young children, older adults, and native Spanish speakers. Some English signal words might communicate hazard information to non-English speakers, therefore the present study examines the connoted hazard of both English and Spanish signal words by native Spanish speakers. Frequently, warnings also use non-text elements such as colors and symbols to call attention to the warning and to convey the level of hazard; Recent research using native English speakers (Wogalter et al., 1995; Kalsher et al., 1995) has evaluated some of the components recommended in the widely cited ANSI (1991) Z535 standard for warning design. Although these studies confirmed parts of the standard (e.g., red indicates greater hazard), other parts were not confirmed (e.g., people do not differentiate between orange and yellow in connoted hazard). The present study examines Spanish-language users' interpretations of colors and icons and whether their interpretations correspond with those of English users and the ANSI standards. 2. Method Participants Forty-eight Spanish speaking people living in or visiting the Raleigh, NC area were tested. Most knew little or no English. Eighty-five percent were from Mexico; 11 % were born in the US but listed Spanish as their first language. Materials and procedure The Spanish terms (38) were selected from current Spanish warnings, dictionaries and a thesaurus. Additional terms were generated by three bilingual natives of Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela who suggested the equivalent words used in their countries for each of the English terms. If the Spanish word varied by country, all three words were included. The English terms (34) were chosen from earlier studies (e.g., Wogalter and Silver, 1990; 1995). Also included were 4 terms that were both Spanish and English words. Table 1 shows the 76 words tested. The stimuli also included ten colors from the ANSI Z535.1 safety color standard. Six general warning symbols were evaluated. Table 2 lists the colors and symbols. 353