Table 1.

Determining Potential Gist Representations that are Likely to be Encoded for a Particular Decision or Situation.

Questions to ask to begin the derivation of gist ○ What information about the options is relevant and important to make this particular decision? ○ What is the essence of this decision (what is it really about)? ▪ Example: Is the O.J. Simpson case basically about domestic violence or about racism and corruption? ○ What do the options boil down to? ○ What quantities are essentially “nil”? ○ What quantities are essentially “the same” as opposed to qualitatively (meaningfully) different? ○ Which outcomes are irretrievable? ▪ Examples: once in a lifetime allowable election of long-term care benefits; losing one’s home to fire without being able to afford to replace it; irreversible joint damage from arthritis; instantaneous death from a pulmonary embolism; being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole ○ Which categorical or ordinal distinctions can be made by comparing options (e.g., only one option offers the possibility of nothing as compared to something)? ○ Which distinctions are arbitrary or trivial (and thus should be ignored or assimilated to other outcomes)?

Operational definitions of gist [4] ○ Ask people to summarize the gist (the essential bottom line) of the decision. ○ Ask people to recall the decision information after a long-term retention interval. ○ Ask people to recognize verbatim and gist representations of information under different instructional conditions designed to disentangle verbatim and gist representations (see [5]). ○ Ask people to provide a title for a narrative relevant to the decision.

Examples of categorical gist ○ No chance to live vs. a chance to live ○ Extending life (a chance to live longer) vs. not extending life ○ Not really living (e.g., comatose or sedated) vs. really living (e.g., conscious and able to communicate) ○ Saving some lives vs. not saving lives ○ Gaining money vs. gaining no money ○ Gaining money vs. losing money ○ Having a life vs. not having a life ▪ Accepting a plea bargain means that the defendant can resume his career and it gives him a chance at a life.

Examples of ordinal gist ○ Gaining more money vs. gaining less money ○ Saving more lives vs. saving fewer lives ○ Higher quality of life vs. lower quality of life ○ Serving fewer years in prison vs. serving more years in prison ○ Living more years vs. living fewer years

Note: For more extensive and formal descriptions of gist derivation, see Broniatowski and Reyna ([6], Table 1) and Reyna ([7], Figures 1 and 2). Note that people with different levels of expertise or background knowledge, different experience in a domain, or cultural or background differences may have different gist representations. Multiple gist representations are typically extracted for the same information and can all be consistent with that information. The “correct” gist is both accurate (not contradicted by the information) and relevant to the task at hand (e.g., to the question being asked). The O. J. Simpson example is drawn from a question posed by a presenter at the International Bar Association, Chicago, Illinois on 17 May 2018. Orenthal J. (a former professional football player known as “O. J.”) Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife (whom he had abused) in a 1995 trial in Los Angeles Superior Court in which attorneys argued that police were racially biased.