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FEATURES


New HD faculty explore the power of identity and positive youth development

Human Development has added two new faculty members this year, Misha Inniss-Thompson and Adam Hoffman. Click here to read more.


Connecting communities with brain science

The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR) is launching a new project – the Community Neuroscience Initiative, (CNI) headed by four Human Development faculty, Anthony Burrow, Marlen Gonzalez, Eve De Rosa, and Adam Anderson. All have been engaged in STEM outreach and engagement and envision CNI as a way to build connections between neuroscience research, STEM education, and community empowerment. Click here to read more.


The risk of silence and the underreporting of concussions

Peter Ajayi

Concussion injuries among high school and college athletes have become a central concern in youth sports. Prompt self-reporting of a concussion immediately improves brain recovery and is necessary to reduce second-impact syndrome, rapid swelling of the brain after a person receives a second concussion before symptoms of the first concussion have subsided. Unfortunately, repetitive head injuries in adolescents and young adults are often underreported. Peter Ajayi, HD’19, David Garavito, JD/PhD ’21, and Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, are the first to detail an association between socioeconomic status (SES) and concussion reporting intentions among adolescents and young adults. Click here to read more.


HD students achieve during the COVID-19 pandemic

Despite the restrictions on campus to prevent the spread of COVID-19, graduate and undergraduate students in Human Development persisted and excelled in their research and outreach activities. Click here to read more.


FEATURES


Medical decision making and COVID-19 risks

Valerie Reyna leads discussions about communicating the risks of COVID-19 to the public.


COVID-19 pandemic spurs family reconciliation

Karl Pillemer of the Cornell Reconciliation Project writes about how the COVID-19 crisis has led some people to reconcile with their families.


From cultural differences to human universals

Qi Wang articulates the role of cultural psychology in bridging cultural gaps in psychological research and in society.


Spatial language and play are key to developing spatial skills

Marianella Casasola shows how multisensory play in naturalistic settings is fundamental to the early development of visual-spatial abilities.


Smoothing career paths for women in science

Wendy Williams and Jane Mendle contribute to our understanding of the career challenges women in academic sciences face and the way forward.


Valerie Reyna, Lois and Mel Tukman Professor of Human Development, Director of the Human Neuroscience Institute, and Co-Director of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research, was invited to moderate the symposium “Responding to COVID-19: Emerging insights from social, behavioral and economic sciences,” for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. You can watch the video recording below:

Refer to Dr. Reyna's publications to learn more about her Fuzzy-Trace Theory approach to decision making about COVID-19 risk:

Reyna, V. F. (2020). A scientific theory of gist communication and misinformation resistance, with implications for health, education, and policy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of AmericaAdvance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912441117

Reyna, V. F. (2020). Decision making about risk in the era of the novel coronavirus diseaseCHEST, 158(4), 1310-1311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2020.07.005

Reyna, V. F. (2020). Of viruses, vaccines, and variability: Qualitative meaning mattersTrends in Cognitive Sciences. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.015

Dr. Reyna also chaired the symposium, "Theories of medical decision making: Explaining, predicting, and improving health and healthcare" at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making. You can watch the video recording below:

Valerie Reyna

Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, studies the neuroscience of risky decision making and its implications for health and well-being. She says changing advice contributes to the perception that experts might not know what they are doing, which is false. Emotions and actions in reaction to a risk depend crucially on how people understand the gist of the risk.  Providing the facts is important, but it is how people interpret those facts that determine behavior. Dr. Reyna participated in a Newswire roundtable of experts (click here for the link to the video) and discussed how her research can help the public better understand the risks of COVID-19 and improve their decisions about how to respond to it. She also participated in a roundtable discussion organized by the Association for Psychological Science (click here for the link to the transcript).

During the COVID-19 crisis, the public’s need for accurate scientific information is a matter of life and death.  Nevertheless, misinformation is plentiful and it competes with scientific information in what Reyna calls “a battle for the gist” in a new PNAS publication.

In an age of evidence-based science communications for the public good, researchers face a persistent paradox. Despite their efforts to report research findings to the public, misinformation propagates across the Web and around the world. Outreach campaigns using traditional fact-based communications are not necessarily effective in correcting misconceptions. What can be done to more effectively communicate science in a way that helps the public resist misinformation?

Valerie Reyna, Lois and Melvin Tukman Professor of Human Development at Cornell University, has applied her information-processing model, Fuzzy Trace Theory (FTT) to the puzzle of why people accept alternative explanations, narratives, interpretations, or conspiracy theories, and discount or distort facts. All human beings tend to distort facts.  However, it is possible to help people make decisions that draw on scientific facts and that reflect personal values.  The FTT approach offers a framework to understand and to reduce obstacles to public understanding of scientific research. Reyna has identified several key components necessary for constructing an accurate representation of the meaning of science communications.

According to the FTT model, as we process information, it is encoded simultaneously in two formats – “gist” and “verbatim.” Verbatim information includes specific facts, details, numbers, and exact quantities. The precise details, percentages, proportions, or ratios can represent facts, but typical scientific communications do not necessarily convey the relevance or substance of facts: its bottom-line meaning. Rote memory for detailed information often fades from memory, whereas memory for gist—or substance--endures.

Gist representations of information in the mind elicit emotions and social values, and are shaped by knowledge and experience. Research has shown that long after verbatim content, (e.g., specific words, numbers, or syntax), has faded from memory, gist memory remains preserved.

The discrepancy between the recall of gist information and the recall of verbatim information offers an inroad to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. The effort to provide objective unbiased facts often leads researchers to present data largely in a verbatim format, allowing recipients to judge for themselves the truth-value and justification of the data. This verbatim approach opens the door to others to offer interpretations and explanations, even when the science is uncertain.  Hence, meaningful, emotional, and values-evoking alternative gist interpretations or narratives can gain traction and spread across the internet or similar media. Individuals can unintentionally misconstrue the verbatim details of the data and share it with others.

The repetition of these messages within a community of sharers and recipients adds credibility to interpretations as the precise verbatim details are increasingly forgotten in favor of the gist content of the misinformation. Thus, Reyna explains that rather than removing all interpretation, emotion, and values, that scientists can communicate in a way that is neither meaningless facts nor persuasion.  The meaning behind the gist—the why—should be made as transparent as possible so that individuals can make their own decisions. The gist-based approach to science communications builds on a foundation of science literacy and the value of scientific research for the public, as well as reduces the acceptance and spread of misinformation.

Journal reference for this story:

Reyna, V.R. (2020). A scientific theory of gist communication and misinformation resistance, with implications for health, education, and policy, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1912441117

Valerie Reyna, Professor of Human Development and Director of the Human Neuroscience Institute

APS Roundtable: Psychological Science and COVID-19, What We Know and What We Can Do

On March 18, the Association for Psychological Science convened a virtual roundtable of four APS members who discussed the psychological dimensions of COVID-19 and how it is affecting both society and individuals. The online gathering produced intriguing insights on the pandemic and the research-based actions we can take to minimize its impact.

Panelists included Bethany Teachman (University of Virginia), Katie McLaughlin (Harvard University), Valerie Reyna (Cornell University), and Andreas Olsson (Karolinska Institutet).

Before we begin, let us go around the virtual table and introduce ourselves and our particular areas of expertise.

I am Bethany Teachman, and I am a professor and director of clinical training at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and I think the primary reason I’m on the panel is that I study anxiety and emotion dysregulation and how people think differently when they’re anxious and what kinds of things we can do to try to manage that.

This is Katie McLaughlin. I’m a professor at Harvard University in the psychology department and my research focuses on how experiences of stress influence the way we think, our emotions, our ability to regulate our emotions, and our health.

I’m Valerie Reyna, a professor at Cornell University where I direct the Human Neuroscience Institute and I study risk communication and medical decision making.  My research is about how people interpret the gist of risks, so that they can bring values to bear on their choices and lead healthy lives.

And I am Andreas Olsson, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. I’m directing a lab with a research focus on fear and defensive behaviors. We are inspired by a cross-species approach with a focus on experimental work in humans, and we are particularly interested in how fear and anxiety spreads across individuals, which is termed social fear learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as a “collective crisis.” Does this perspective change the way people adapt to and manage the situation?

Bethany Teachman: This is a situation that can have both positive and negative effects as a function of it being a collective crisis. On the positive side, there is a sense that we’re in it together and we see many amazing examples of people supporting one another. On the negative side, we see some people respond to this with a sense that they need to “protect their own” and it is “us versus them.”

Valerie Reyna: And many people are feeling both impulses at the same time. They’re obviously going to feel fear because of the uncertainty, the present threat, and the potential threats. And the social cues around people right now are going to raise their perception that we’re in danger. Then there’s the talk of the long-term impact to the economy too, and you have a real recipe for people to be anxious and frightened.

Andreas Olsson: The good side of this [being a collective crisis] is that sharing others’ anxieties and fears can motivate us to help each other, but the flip side is that sharing others' anxiety can cause a lot of suffering for some individuals. Today, when some people are monitoring the situation 24/7, that means they have exposure to a lot of suffering […] and this takes a big toll.

Katie McLaughlin: Psychological science has taught us quite clearly that in situations of mass trauma or mass stressors, like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, there’s a very clear link between the degree of media exposure that people have and their symptoms of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. People [should be] very mindful about how they’re engaging with media accounts of the virus in the current crisis and to try to limit exposure.

With the seemingly unrelenting stressors we are dealing with, is there a psychological equivalent to a low-grade fever that people may be experiencing?

Katie McLaughlin: This is unquestionably a period where people are experiencing an enormous amount of stress, given the large demands that the situation is placing on our daily lives—the changes in our routines and structures that we typically rely on, and the uncertainty surrounding how long this is going to last and what the ultimate impact is going to be on our families, on our communities, and on our workplaces. […] So absolutely, this is a period of time when people are likely going to be noticing higher levels of anxiety and depression than they might normally experience.

Bethany Teachman: It’s reasonable to have some anxiety and sadness. At the same time, it’s important not to get stuck there. There are a number of things that we can do to maintain as much of our normal lives as possible.

The first area is relationships. Social distancing does not have to equal social isolation. Those are two very different concepts and virtual interaction can make a big difference.

The second is thoughts and feelings. It really doesn’t help us to spend 10 hours a day scrolling through newsfeeds and posts on COVID-19. So in a number of anxiety treatments, we encourage people to pick a couple of times a day when they focus on their worries and get the information that they need to problem-solve but then spend the rest of their time living their lives as normally as possible.

The third piece is standard behavioral self-care. A lot of what helps at this time is healthy eating, sleep, exercise, and perspective-taking so that you don’t get stuck in assuming the worst.

And the fourth is to live your values. So be kind to yourself and be kind to others. This is a stressful time and anxiety is normal. We have to give ourselves permission to experience the feelings that we’re having and then to try to do as much as we can to maintain normality in the face of that situation.

Andreas Olsson: In the long run, if we would continue keeping up the vigilance and being stressed over time, this will definitely lead to a number of very bad consequences for us as individuals as well as society. We know that a long-term anxiety [can worsen attention spans], memory, and immune-system responses. So there’s a number of bad consequences in keeping this chronic anxiety for a longer period of time.

Katie McLaughlin: Social relationships are an incredibly important buffer against the negative consequences of stress. We know that having strong emotional support not only prevents anxiety and depression in periods of stress but also buffers against the negative physiological consequences of stress on the immune system and physical health. One of my very favorite studies shows that stress-buffering effects that you get from receiving social support you also get when you give social support to other people. And this is something that people can control right now—the degree of support they provide to others, including members of our communities who are more vulnerable.

Valerie Reyna: Human behavior is affecting everything from the stock market to the actions people take or don’t take to reduce risk, like social distancing. Behavior will determine the actual public health risk in the end. If we’re able to understand why behaviors are risky, and therefore follow appropriate guidelines, we will have a far better outcome than if we don’t.

From your experience, what is one thing psychological science tells us that we should know?

Valerie Reyna: One of the most important fundamental findings that informs what we’re dealing with right now is that people react to the gist of the events rather than the details and the facts. It’s how people interpret reality that governs their emotions and their actions, not the actual reality itself. So we have to think about this torrent of information washing over everybody. How can we help people extract the bottom-line gist of that information so that they can take effective action?

Bethany Teachman: We are not just passive recipients of what is happening. […] We can collectively work together to respond to this situation as a challenge, as opposed to appraising it as an impossible threat that we cannot manage.

Katie McLaughlin: Giving support to other people is just as effective at helping to reduce stress responses and the negative consequences of stress for our physical and mental health as receiving support from others.

We know very clearly that exposing yourself to a lot of media coverage about the pandemic is going to increase anxiety. The more we can create positive habits and boundaries around our exposure to media, the better.

Andreas Olsson: We not only have to understand our ability in our agency, but we also have to know the limitations of our minds. We really need to spend time trying to trust the experts. We have physicians and epidemiologists who are really good at explaining the effects of the virus on society. We also have psychologists who are really good at giving advice on how to cope with isolation, fear, and anxiety. In uncertain times like now, when it is impossible to have a full understanding of the situation, we need to rely on trusted sources of information.


HD TODAY e-NEWS: Insights from Human Development's Research & Outreach

HD TODAY e-NEWS is a quarterly digest of cutting-edge research from the Department of Human Development, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University. Explore the HD Today e-NEWS website at http://hdtoday.human.cornell.edu/ and discover a wide range of resources:

SPRING 2019 ISSUE

Stephen Ceci is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the College of Human Ecology is elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ceci’s research focuses on understanding real-world problems and settings. His work spans studies of intellectual development; children and the law; and women in science.


Imaging shows distinct pattern for tastes in the brain's taste center

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a new method of statistical analysis, Adam Anderson and colleagues have discovered that sweet, sour, salty, and bitter tastes are represented in distinct areas of the taste center in the human brain.


An interview with Valerie Reyna by CCE News

Dr. Valerie Reyna is Lois and Melvin Tukman Professor and has been Department Extension Leader for the Human Development department of the Cornell University College of Human Ecology since 2005. She also directs the Human Neuroscience Institute and co-directs the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research.


The Integrative Neuroscience Salon - where science is a team sport

Dr. Marlen Gonzalez founded the Integrative Neuroscience Salon to create an inclusive community of "neuroscientifically curious" scientists from disparate disciplines, including human development, psychology, communications, engineering, neurobiology, computer science and law to meet and discuss neuroscience research through presentations and papers.


Anthony Burrow explains how 4-H can foster identity and purpose

Anthony Burrow, Professor in the Department of Human Development and co-director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research’s Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE), was interviewed for the podcast "Extension Out Loud." He discusses how exploring identity and sense of purpose helps young people get more out of programs such as 4-H.


Advancing science communication through Fuzzy-Trace Theory

Watch Valerie Reyna's talk at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's (NASEM) Colloquium on Advancing the Science and Practice of Science Communication: Misinformation About Science in the Public Sphere held in Irvine, CA on April 3-4, 2019 and co-sponsored by Rita Allen Foundation, Science Sandbox, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The KAVLI Foundation.


 

FEATURES

Stephen Ceci is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the College of Human Ecology is elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ceci’s research focuses on understanding real-world problems and settings. His work spans studies of intellectual development; children and the law; and women in science.


Imaging shows distinct pattern for tastes in the brain's taste center

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a new method of statistical analysis, Adam Anderson and colleagues have discovered that sweet, sour, salty, and bitter tastes are represented in distinct areas of the taste center in the human brain.


An interview with Valerie Reyna by CCE News

Dr. Valerie Reyna is Lois and Melvin Tukman Professor and has been Department Extension Leader for the Human Development department of the Cornell University College of Human Ecology since 2005. She also directs the Human Neuroscience Institute and co-directs the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research.


The Integrative Neuroscience Salon - where science is a team sport

Dr. Marlen Gonzalez founded the Integrative Neuroscience Salon to create an inclusive community of "neuroscientifically curious" scientists from disparate disciplines, including human development, psychology, communications, engineering, neurobiology, computer science and law to meet and discuss neuroscience research through presentations and papers.


MULTIMEDIA

Anthony Burrow explains how 4-H can foster identity and purpose

Anthony Burrow, Professor in the Department of Human Development and co-director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research’s Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE), was interviewed for the podcast "Extension Out Loud." He discusses how exploring identity and sense of purpose helps young people get more out of programs such as 4-H.


Advancing science communication through Fuzzy-Trace Theory

Watch Valerie Reyna's talk at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's (NASEM) Colloquium on Advancing the Science and Practice of Science Communication: Misinformation About Science in the Public Sphere held in Irvine, CA on April 3-4, 2019 and co-sponsored by Rita Allen Foundation, Science Sandbox, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The KAVLI Foundation.


 

Valerie Reyna

Dr. Valerie Reyna is Lois and Melvin Tukman Professor and Department Extension Leader for the Human Development department of the Cornell University College of Human Ecology. She directs the Human Neuroscience Institute and co-directs the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research.

What is your role with Extension?

I've been a Director of Extension since 2005, and one of the jobs that I have is to get the word out about what people are doing in the Human Development Department. Our Department is filled with people that go into the community and do a variety of things, a lot of which takes place in New York State. We integrate fundamental, basic science with societal problems. It's a lot of work to do both, but we think that's where a place like Cornell--and the College of Human Ecology--fill a huge need.

How has working with CCE has informed your research?

Working with young people, adults in the community, and Extension staff have taught us a great deal about how to promote healthy choices.  For example, the content of the curriculum for reducing the risk of sexually transmitted disease and premature pregnancy has benefited from meeting with people on the front lines. We took their input and updated that curriculum. We took a curriculum, a multi-component curriculum that had some effect according to the CDC, and then we added our theoretical component to update it, magnify that effect, and make it last. We also developed an implementation manual. And all of this work benefitted enormously from  having a lot of discussions with staff in CCE as well as the people from the community. I always tell my students to do a lot of listening because people will have crucial information about the nature of their life experience.

How has your research on decision making influenced public programming or outreach?

We have done laboratory demonstrations where we carefully test why people are making the choices they're making, including the brain and their behavior. From there we develop curricula and public health programs that our students deliver.

For example, one intervention we developed, which is on the best practices list of the CDC now, is for teenagers to reduce sexual risk-taking. The goal is to reduce premature pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. It is a 14-hour-plus intervention that we train our students to deliver to youth clubs, CCE educators, New York State 4-H camps, and many other places.

We partner with CCE educators and we’ve gone into a variety of CCE sites over the years. For example, we've worked with Jackie Davis-Manigaulte  from Cornell University Cooperative Extension - New York City.

What kind of value do those environments and those relationships provide your research?

I think it's very important to have the feedback go both ways. We really want to listen to people in the community. Their concerns inform my research and help me test my theories.  Laboratory tests and real-world tests are an unbeatable combination: Lab tests tell you what is factually true, what causes human behavior. Real-world tests answer the question, is this really about something that's relevant? Do people think this is a problem?

For example, I recently had a graduate student, David Garavito, approach me, interested in concussions. And I knew concussions were a problem in the NFL, but the extent to which they’re an issue with ordinary middle school, high school and college students was really eye-opening. We, along with James Kim (a 2017 CCE summer intern), who joined us as an undergrad, performed outreach with the Ithaca Youth Bureau and designed and delivered a curriculum for 4-H camps and middle-schools.

All of this hasn't been done before. We build on health guidelines from the CDC, NIH, and other reliable sources, but we provide a psychological bridge between those facts and the human mind. We find that most people, especially young people, are in need of that bridge. We want to give them the facts and help them understand what they mean. What do they mean for your decisions? And how can we help you have insight into those facts, so that you can be the agent of your own choices that are healthy choices?

Read more about David Garavito’s work on concussions here. Read James Kim’s student journal about his summer internship experience studying concussions here.

How do you make complicated research more understandable for the general public?

Most adults want the bottom-line qualitative essence of information. They want to know what's the bottom line or the “gist” of what experts are talking about. For every domain that we study, whether it's healthy eating, fitness, concussion, or sexual risk-taking and HIV prevention, we say, what's the gist of this risk?

We understand that it’s not realistic, nor even healthy, to avoid all risk. You want to take some risks, but they should be healthy risks. So we try to distill the latest scientific information into its gist so that it can be in a usable form.

That's the centerpiece of our fuzzy trace theory. Fuzzy traces are the gist traces. It says get to the gist, teach the gist, illustrate the gist. Tell people the facts, but make sure you communicate the important essence of those facts, not just a lot of random things that may or may not be relevant to the decision you have to make.

For updates from Cornell University, College of Human Ecology’s Human Development department, including Dr. Reyna’s work, visit hdtoday.human.cornell.edu and subscribe to the HD Today newsletter.

Communicating the Gist: Misinformation, Memory, and Meaning - Valerie Reyna, Cornell University

Valerie Reyna participated in a panel discussion about best practices and a review of the available research on the effects of communicating science through storytelling and narrative through traditional media, social media, and entertainment media on misconceptions about information from science, including topics involved in controversy.

This talk was part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's (NASEM) Colloquium Advancing the Science and Practice of Science Communication: Misinformation About Science in the Public Sphere held in Irvine, CA on April 3-4, 2019 and co-sponsored by Rita Allen Foundation, Science Sandbox, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The KAVLI Foundation.