Despite the many benefits of Over-the-Counter drugs for older consumers, there are risks that accompany their use, with as many as 15% of older OTC medication users being at risk of a serious Adverse Drug Reaction. As such, there is a responsibility to develop packaging that provides the essential function of facilitating cost-effective patient care by communicating critical information at the point of purchase. Optimally designed labels garner attention to critical information regardless of whether the consumer is engaged in bottom-up processing (a habitual purchase) or top-down processing (deliberative search for specific information).We objectively assessed four label designs to investigate the effect of highlighting critical information (defined as warnings associated with drug/drug or drug diagnosis interactions and the active ingredient within a product) and placement of the same on the front of the package (FOP label treatment). Highlighting and FOP were crossed for a total of four designs (highlight (HL) with FOP, HL without FOP, No HL (nonHL) with FOP, nonHL without FOP(current, standard practice)). These treatments were utilized to evaluate how design attributes attract attention to critical information and promote decision-making in older adults (65+) when accessing that information was and was not the participant’s goal. Three studies were conducted in support of these goals. First, a change detection task, investigating the efficacy of each design strategy’s ability to garner attention to critical information; dependent variables were both binary (correctly located yes/no) and continuous (time to correct identification). The final 2 studies investigated design performance from a top-down processing frame using an absolute judgement task and a dichotomous decision, forced-choice task. Dependent variables for each of the final two experiments were accuracy and response time (reported in units of log10ms). Overall, the results support the novel combination proposed (HL/FOP) as a strategy for communicating critical information. Change detection results support the use of HL, particularly for active ingredient information appearing on the Principal Display Panel, as indicated by a significant interaction between HL and change location for both accuracy and reaction time. In the absolute judgment task, accuracy in drug warning trials increased in the presence of HL (nonHL ME=0.738, SE=0.019 vs HL ME=0.777, SE=0.018; p=0.04), and the presence of an FOP helped garner attention to active ingredient information, evidenced by both FOP treatments (FOP/HL ME=0.910, SE=0.019, vs FOP/nonHL ME=0.908, SE=0.019) being significantly more accurate than the no FOP, nonHL treatment (ME=0.878, SE=0.023; p=0.01). There was also evidence for the efficacy of HL with significantly faster FOP/HL responses (ME=3.902, SE=0.026) than no FOP/nonHL responses (ME=3.944, SE=0.026; p=0.003). Forced choice results also suggest HL increases accuracy and decreases reaction time, evidenced by a significant main effect of HL on accuracy for drug warning trials (nonHL ME=0.952, SE=0.010 vs HL ME=0.974, SD=0.007; p=0.013), and compared to no FOP/nonHL, significantly faster reaction times induced for no FOP/HL treatment in active ingredient trials (no FOP/HL ME=3.670, SE=0.025 vs no FOP/nonHL ME=3.718, SE=0.025) and for both types of HL treatments for drug warning information trials (FOP/HL ME=4.276, SE=0.022; no FOP/HL ME=4.291, SE=0.023 vs no FOP/nonHL ME=4.392 SE=0.023). Results of a secondary analysis investigating familiarity with brand names and active ingredients indicate that participants were significantly more familiar with the brand names (M=7.5, SD=2.52) than the active ingredients (M=3.4, SD=2.54; p<0.001) for all nine of ten products reviewed. When individual brand-active ingredient pairs were investigated, only Advil-Ibuprofen had similar levels of familiarity.
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