The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon (original) (raw)
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A tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experience refers to the state in which a speaker is temporally unable to retrieve a word from memory, while being sure that he knows the word. The recovered partial information can consist of competing items that resemble the target word phonologically or semantically and could give rise to competition or conflict during attempts to resolve the TOT. A question that has been discussed recently is whether phonologically similar words block or facilitate lexical retrieval. A study at Frankfurt University (cf. Hofferberth 2008) found that participants preferred searching for their intended word by a semantic search strategy instead of a phonological one. The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state has been described as one " in which one cannot quite recall a familiar word but can recall words of similar form and meaning " (Brown & McNeill 1966: 325). In a TOT state, speakers have a strong feeling of knowing the word, have access to its meaning and (partial) access to its syntactic properties. Speakers cannot retrieve the complete phonological form but are often able to retrieve the first letter, the number of syllables, stress pattern, other letters/phonemes in the word as well as words with similar sound and similar meaning. Successful lexical retrieval in a TOT state can be imminent (within minutes) or delayed (after some hours or days) and may occur spontaneously (pop-ups). The resolution may be through external search strategies (such as looking up the word in a dictionary or by asking someone) or through internal strategies (such as searching in the alphabet or generating similar words) (cf. Brown 1991). TOT states may represent the momentary unavailability of an otherwise accessible word (blocking hypothesis) or the weak activation of an otherwise inaccessible word (incomplete activation hypothesis) (cf. Meyer & Bock 1992).
Tip-Of-The-Tongue States with Foreign Language Words: Resolution Types and Word Strategies
1999
This article analyzes the resolution types of tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states with foreign/second language (FL) words. lt attempts to describe some of the search passes, strategies, and cues that are used by learners to overcome temporary word retrieval failures. More than a hundred TOT states were recorded in cognitive diaries by Russian and Mexican learners of English and by English speaking learners of German over periods of four weeks. The subjects reported to have resolved the TOT states through use of references (46% of the time), directed search (22.6% of the time), environmental cues (17.0% of the time), and spontaneous "pop-up" resolutions (12.3% of the time). The diary reports demonstrate that learners frequently recalled and manipulated fragmentary information about the target word and word associates. The latter were mostly intralingual associations (of the FL) that shared sound similarity or meaning similarity with the target word. Differ...
Are tip-of-the-tongue states universal? Evidence from the speakers of an unwritten language
Memory, 2007
Schwartz (1999, 2002) has claimed that tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) are universal. The studies reported in this paper examine this claim for illiterates, unschooled literates, and schooled readers, all speakers of an unwritten Guatemalan language. The first study showed that, although there was little evidence of a dedicated verbal expression for this state of consciousness in the Mayan language of Q'eqchi’, a majority of participants in all three groups recognised a description of the phenomenology associated with tip-of-the-tongue states. In two further studies it was shown that TOTs could be induced in all groups of participants, and that they were reliably resolved by the presentation of the words’ initials. Thus, even in the absence of an expression for “tip-of-the-tongue state”, the basic phenomenology and cueing properties of TOTs were similar to those reported in previous studies. However, only university-level participants reported partial knowledge of word targets they had failed to recall. The results are discussed from psycholinguistic and metacognitive perspectives, drawing a possible link between TOTs and epistemic curiosity.
On the role of the syllable in tip-of-the-tongue states
The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon is a type of production failure during phonological encoding. A reaction-time experiment was performed to determine whether the right first syllable of the target facilitates TOT resolution and whether another first syllable inhibits TOT resolution. The syllables were presented individually , which means not in another word related to the target in order to avoid interlopers. It seems that the right first syllable facilitates a positive TOT resolution, while a wrong first syllable has an inhibiting effect. These results indicate that the presentation of the right first syllable of the target word strengthens the weakened phonological connections that cause TOTs and facilitates word retrieval. Theoretical background The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon refers to the experience when a well-known or familiar word cannot immediately be recalled but " recall is felt to be imminent " (Brown & McNeill 1966: 325). In the absence of actual retrieval, various aspects of the inaccessible target word are still frequently available, such as first phoneme or letter, first syllable and number of syllables. The recovered partial information can consist of competing items that resemble the target word phonologically and/or semantically and could give rise to competition or conflict during attempts to resolve the TOT. These words that often come to mind while experiencing a TOT and can hamper TOT resolution are so-called " interlopers ". Successful lexical retrieval in a TOT state can be imminent (within minutes) or delayed (after some hours or days) and may occur spontaneously (so-called " pop-ups "). TOT resolution may be achieved through external search strategies (such as looking up the word in a dictionary or by asking someone) or through internal strategies (such as searching in the alphabet or generating similar words). Laboratory studies often involve cueing procedures with a cue-target relationship that is not readily obvious, yet efficient to boost activation of the target word and assist TOT resolution. Experiments by James & Burke (2000) demonstrated that phonologically related cues boost activation of the target word. Abrams and colleagues fol
Tip-of-the-tongue states reoccur because of implicit learning, but resolving them helps
Cognition, 2015
In six experiments, we elicited tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states, to investigate the novel finding that TOTs on particular words tend to recur for speakers, and examine whether this effect can be attributed to implicit learning of the incorrect mapping from a lemma to phonology for that word. We elicited TOTs by asking participants to supply the word that fit a given definition, and then retested participants on those same definitions in a second test. In Experiments 1-3 we investigated the time course of learning that occurs during TOTs, and found that TOTs are likely to recur with a five-minute test-retest interval, that this error learning can still be measured following a one-week interval, and that they recur for both monolingual and bilingual speakers. We also report the novel finding that error learning can be corrected when individuals resolve their TOT, making them less likely to re-experience a TOT for that word on a later test. In Experiment 4 we showed that these learning ...
Collabra: Psychology, 2019
Psycholinguistic and metacognition researchers mostly disagree on what constitutes a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state. Psycholinguists argue that TOT states occur when there is a transmission of activation failure between the lemma and phonology levels of word production (e.g., Burke, MacKay, Worthley, & Wade, 1991). Metacognition researchers argue that the TOT state is better described as a subjective experience caused by a mechanism that assesses the likelihood of recall from memory. One sub-hypothesis of the metacognitive account of TOT states is the cue familiarity hypothesis, which suggests that a TOT state may occur when cues elicit a feeling of familiarity (Metcalfe, Schwartz, & Joaquim, 1993). We conducted three experiments to evaluate the cue familiarity hypothesis of TOT state etiology. Experiment 1 included a test-retest TOT task with identical definitions (i.e., cues that should elicit familiarity) versus alternative definitions. TOTs were as likely to repeat for alternative definitions across test and retest as identical definitions, which is inconsistent with the cue familiarity hypothesis. Experiment 2 included the same task layout as Experiment 1, but we used very different cues (pictures versus descriptions for famous people). Again, we found that TOTs tended to repeat regardless of whether or not prompts were identical. In Experiment 3, we presented either a picture and description simultaneously or a description only on the first test, followed by a description only on retest. We found that giving participants an extra semantic cue did not change the probability of repeating a TOT state. These findings suggest that repeated TOT states do not occur due to cue familiarity nor is the locus of the TOT state at the semantic level of the word production/word recall system. Therefore, we argue that the results point towards a success of lemma access, but then failure of the lemma-to-phonology mappings.