Using icon arrays to communicate medical risks: Overcoming low numeracy.

Icon arrays have been suggested as a potentially promising format for communicating risks to patients-especially those with low numeracy skills-but experimental studies are lacking. This study investigates whether icon arrays increase accuracy of understanding medical risks, and whether they affect perceived seriousness of risks and helpfulness of treatments.Two experiments were conducted on samples of older adults (n = 59, 62 to 77 years of...