'Not everything was bad' – Visual efficacy of East and West German ‘Ampelmännchen’ traffic signs probed through cognitive conflict C C Hilgetag1, B Olk2, C Peschke2 |
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1Institut für Computational Neuroscience, Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany |
| In post-unification Germany, lingering conflicts between East and West Germans found some unusual outlets, including a debate of the relative superiority of East and West German ‘Ampelmännchen’ pedestrian traffic signs. In this study, we probed the visual efficacy of East and West German Ampelmännchen signs with a Stroop-like conflict task. Twenty participants were asked to respond as quickly as possible to the shape or color of East or West German Ampelmännchen signs which were either presented in their normal version, with congruent shape and color information, or in a version with incongruent shape and color. Different sizes of colored spaces in these signs were controlled through further benchmark stimuli. We found that the distinctive East German man-with-hat figures were more resistant to conflicting information, and in turn produced greater interference when used as distractors. These findings demonstrate Stroop-like effects for real-life objects, such as traffic signs, and underline the practical utility of an East German icon. |
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