All of us act, much of the time, on varying degrees of autopilot. It's unlikely that the automatic parts of the brain can read, although presumably they are qui

All of us act, much of the time, on varying degrees of autopilot. It's unlikely that the automatic parts of the brain can read, although presumably they are quite capable of pattern-recognizing and processing learned symbolic language like traffic signs (and even that's by no means guaranteed – so many humans merrily ignore or miss changes in signage in traffic, having traveled the same route a thousand times before). The strength and type of stimulus required to "wake us up" – for the brain to realize there's something novel or unexpected that requires the activation of higher-level, analytic parts of the brain – probably varies a lot from person to person, but just a bunch of text is not always enough to do that unless accompanied by familiar semiotic language, which is of course the reason we use symbols and colors to make important messages more likely to be perceived and understood. The best wake-up signals are, of course, those that physically prevent you from doing something you intended to do – a locked door, for example.