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Fuzzy-Trace Theory (FTT) is a theory of memory and cognition used in several different areas of psychology, including cognitive, developmental and social psychology. FTT was first postulated by Brainerd and Reyna in the 1980s and since then, it has more than two decades of empirical support with broad ramifications for the study of decision making and memory development.

FTT says we have two parallel memory representations: verbatim and gist. Verbatim refers to the detailed representations of information. Gist refers to the meaning an individual extracts from information. For example remembering a poem exactly, word for word, is a verbatim representation, while recalling the meaning of that poem and its interpretation would be a gist representation.

The main assumption of the FTT is that people prefer to think, reason and remember using the inexact gist traces rather than the more precise, but more forgettable verbatim traces.

History
The first appearance of FTT dates back to the mid 1980s. At that time there were some dominant paradigms of cognitive development such as Piaget's structuralist approach or "mind-as-a-computer" approach of information processing. Those theories involved the concept of limited cognitive resources or stage-like changes in the nature of representation. FTT rejected those processes, proposing that children of different ages can rely on qualitatively similar representations, they just use different types of representations to solve problems. Therefore it was only after a large amount of empirical support and confirmed counterintuitive findings such as that some false memories in children remain more vivid over time if compared to true memories that this theory was accepted in the scientific community.

Principles of Fuzzy Trace-Theory and Memory Development
There are five main principles that characterize FTT:
 * 1) Parallel storage of verbatim and gist traces: We dissociate verbatim and gist traces and we store them parallel to each other. It was once supposed that the meaning of information is extracted from previously stored verbatim memories, but empirical evidence shows that meaning processing begins sooner (20 - 30 ms) than the completion of the processing of the verbatim information. The two processes run through completion in parallel: this allows us to be able to store several pieces of information about the target's meaning even if we fail to process some of its surface features. Also, on the basis of a single target we can store multiple gist traces because usually a target participates in different meaning. For example the word "Collie" is related to the meanings of "dog", "farm animal" and "pet".
 * 2) Dissociated retrieval of verbatim and gist traces: The mix of verbatim and gist retrieval explains the reason why sometimes we have a coexistence of conflicting memories. Often, verbatim and gist representations are not well integrated with each other. We notice this when we seem to have different solutions to the same problems, even when they are extremely simple. The retrieval of different representations of problem information causes mutually incompatible solutions to the same problem.
 * 3) Differential survival rates for verbatim and gist traces: Many findings suggest that verbatim traces are not preserved as well as gist traces. This difference seems to be caused by the greater verbatim traces' sensitivity to sources of proactive and concurrent interference. This feature applies to both trace consolidation and to subsequent forgetting. As time passes, there is always a progressive shift towards gist access regardless of the strength of the available retrieval cues for verbatim traces.
 * 4) Retrieval Phenomenology: Verbatim and gist traces seem to have a different retrieval phenomenology. The first author that introduced this concept was Strong in an article published in 1913. He differentiated two conditions of retrieval: recollection and familiarity. While verbatim traces induce realistic recollective phenomenology (the exact remembering of the target), gist traces usually induce vague familiarity phenomenology (vague feelings of familiarity towards the target).  A phantom recollection can occur when we report a false event related to the gist of experience that is accompanied by an illusory vivid phenomenology. This happens when we experience a strong similarity between a false item and memory.
 * 5) Developmental variability in verbatim and gist memory: Generally young children's memory is specialized for encoding and processing verbatim information, and the shift in the reliance to mainly gist traces occurs in middle childhood. While age improvements in verbatim memory seem linear, developmental improvements in gist memory are more complex. In fact infants or young preschoolers show the skill of storing certain types of gist such as simple meaning of their experience, but we have to wait years before  they can store gist connections. Connecting the gist means children's ability to extract meaning relations between well known object and events.

False Memories
There are two errors that can occur when people make an attempt to remember the events of their lives: errors of omission and errors of commission. The former is also known as forgetting, and the latter is better known as false memory. The false memories are consistent with the subjects' gist memories, the meaning of their experience. Gist-consistent false information can be suggested to them; younger children are the most sensitive to these kinds of suggestions.

In opposition to common sense, true memories aren't more stable than false ones just because the former are based on experienced events. The latter actually arise from particular memory representation: gist traces. False memories can even be more persistent than true memories if they are good retrieval cues for strong gist memories.

The fallacies of gist representations are well explained by the Deese - Roediger - McDermott (DRM) effect: if we have a list of words that are all associated with a critical word that is not presented, there are high chances that we will falsely recall that word. If the verbatim traces aren't available for all the words, we will falsely recognize the critical word because it's consistent with the gist of that list. The repetition of the word list leads to a better storage and retrieval of the verbatim traces. This means that false recognition of the critical word will decrease after some repetitions of the word list.

False memories are an important issue to forensic science, especially in eyewitness identifications. The most important features in eyewitness identification are the "facial gists" that usually affect the witness, increasing the rate of false positives in recognizing people guilty of a crime. These "facial gists" involve characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity and body build. This phenomenon is more likely to occur when the witness assists the crime scene with many other people. The witness could be influenced by them because many of the other people present at the crime scene may share a certain characteristic.

Decision-making
According to the main assumption of Fuzzy-trace theory, people prefer to act on gist-like representations of problems rather than to act on the more reliable verbatim traces. Children rely more on quantitative thinking within the limits of their computational knowledge, but as development proceeds they will rely more on qualitative gist. This will influence decision making: rather than getting more consistent and less biased with age, it will become less consistent and more biased. The biases occur by virtue of experience; this shift in favor of gist-based processing tells that cognitive development is a progress toward intuition.

Fuzzy-trace theory is all about acting upon gist-like problem representations; it rejects the idea of computational limits as central explanatory constructs. The degree of usage of this gist-based reasoning depends on the situation, but the preference for gist is pervasive. We can consider, from an evolutionary perspective, Fuzzy-trace theory as an economical theory where many routine tasks require only a gist-like representation. This sometimes improves performance in terms of time saved.

Framing effect
Common sense says that overall risk aversion increases with age, but this is not true according to Fuzzy-trace theory and framing effects. These framing effects demonstrate that development moves against risk aversion. Adults find risk highly attractive: when options involve losses, they are more willing to “take chances”.

A framing effect is reported when, for instance, different but equivalent descriptions of a problem lead to different preference answers. The most famous risky choice framing task is the Asian Disease Problem. This task requires the participants to imagine that the United States is about to face a disease which is expected to kill 600 people. They have to choose among two programs to combat this disease.

In the positively framed version of the task the sure and risky options are described in terms of gains:

If program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved.

If program B is adopted, there is 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3 probability that no people will be saved.

In the negatively framed version the same options are described in terms of losses:

If program C is adopted, 400 people will die.

If program D is adopted, there is 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and 2/3 probability that 600 people will die. 

Research results report that people prefer the sure option when the options are positively framed, and the risky option when the options are negatively framed. The variation in wording is sufficient to lead to change in preference, from a risk-avoiding behavior to risk-seeking behavior.

According to a normative point of view, if respondents prefer the sure option in the positive frame, they should also prefer the sure option in the negative frame. These irrational preferences have been explained by the Fuzzy-trace theory: decision making operates on simplified rather than on exact numerical information. People prefer a gist-based processing at the lowest possible level, so, in framing tasks, they reduce all quantitative information into its qualitative gist: some people will be saved (sure gain) and some people will be saved or no one will be saved (risky gain). In the positive frame people’s preference is that saving some people is better than saving none, so the sure option is selected. But in the negative frame, our gist-based way of reasoning translates the two options into: some people will die (sure option), and nobody will die or some people will die (risky option). In this case the words “nobody will die” are more appealing and cause them to choose the risky option. When the Asian Disease Problem is worded in terms of people saved, respondents will consider the sure option more attractive because they may infer that the number of people being saved increases. When this problem is worded in terms of people dying, the sure option is less attractive because they intuitively infer that the number of people dying is increasing.

Medical decision making
Messages about health-related risks are often subject to biases or misunderstandings in medical decision making. Fuzzy-trace theory can explain why people make these errors and biases. People have difficulties in translating numbers (or other verbatim-based health-related information) into meaningful representation (gist-based representations). These gist-based representations, to be reliable and effective in medical decision making, have to be merged with people’s values, knowledge and processing ratio concept (such as probabilities). But evidence shows that people tend to rely on vague gist, not taking into account all the precise information that is presented. Given that this is the global tendency, to be effective information must rely on gist-based intuition rather than verbatim-based analysis.

Even if health professionals with domain-specific knowledge can more accurately formulate estimations than non-professionals, mental representations of risks are still based more on qualitative gist traces than quantitative verbatim traces. For example, the risk of contracting HPV (Human papillomavirus) is high if compared to the risk of contracting HIV (Human immunodeficiency virus), a health professional will be more likely to make errors when he estimating the overall risk of contracting a STI (Sexually transmitted infection). According to Fuzzy-trace theory health care professionals underestimate risk of contracting STI because our overall judgement is disjunctive (HPV or HIV) while it should be additive (HPV and HIV). Overlapping classes cause processing interference and confusion in following appropriate sets and subsets for judgements.

Intervention programs
FTT has also been applied to understand and provide hints in order to ameliorate intervention programs. These programs have the aim of reducing unhealthy behaviors among adolescents such as smoking, substance abuse, reckless driving and so forth. If the programs are successful, this would certainly result in a reduction in human suffering and associated economic costs consequent to these behaviors. Adolescents are developmentally competent in decision making about risks; if sometimes the way they act is in contrast to a healthy behavior it's because they are more likely to seek immediate pleasure. Adolescents are influenced by typical aspects that characterize their age such as impulsivity, sensation seeking and depression. Traditional interventions that focus only on trying to enhance risk perception are more likely to be ineffective because adolescents already feel vulnerable and even overestimate the risks of unhealthy activities. Experience is not a good deterrent too because they seem to be not learning much from negative outcomes, especially in the absence of adverse consequences. In spite of adults, adolescents are more likely to reason through an age-specific weighting of risk; effective intervention programs should focus on teaching them not to grasp the gists of risky situations without proceeding into a thorough risk/benefit analysis.