The matching game: Educating children about household hazards and warning symbols

Because young children lack reading skills, traditional text-based warnings can be rendered ineffective. Pictorials might be an alternative for text to conveying safety-related information. Surprisingly, very little research has been conducted to explore the comprehensibility of safety symbols by young children. In the current study, 15 young children, aged 3-6 years ( M = 4.7 years, SD = 1.2) were asked to: (a) identify the hazards associated with five common household items, (b) interpret the meaning of five associated warning symbols, and then (c) play a matching game where household items were paired with appropriate warning symbols. Results indicated that successful hazard identification varied considerably between household items. All children were able to identify the fall or crush hazard associated with an open window but almost none of them identified the strangulation hazard associated with window-blind cords. When symbol comprehensibility was initially assessed, fewer than half exceeded 50% correct identification but training provided by the experimenter benefited the children in understanding their meaning. Performance on the matching game illustrated that children were able to successfully acquire the safety information after being provided with definitions of the symbols and were able to pair them with the appropriate household items.