Resolving semantically induced tip-of-the-tongue states for proper nouns

Abstract

Three experiments are reported in which tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTSs) were induced in subjects by reading them pieces of item-specific information. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects attempted to name famous people. These experiments showed that, in a TOTS, seeing a picture of the face of the target person did not facilitate naming, whereas the initials of the person's name did. In Experiment 3, a similar result was obtained with a landmark-naming task. The results of the experiments are discussed with reference to current models of memory structure and name retrieval.The tip-of-the-tongue state (TOTS) is an everyday phenomenon. When one attempts to recall a particular word or name, one experiences some degree of partial knowledge, along with a feeling that one could recognize the "target." William James (1893) was prompted to describe this state as "a sort of wraith of a name."The first quantitative study of the TOTS was conducted by Brown and McNeill (1966). They provided evidence as to the nature of the partial knowledge that is available in TOTSs. Successful guessing of the number of syllables in the target word was achieved in a high proportion of cases, and, even more impressively, because of the lower chance levels, a word's initial letter was offered correctly on 57% of the occasions.Yarmey (1973) first drew attention to the occurrence of TOTSs in other naming tasks-specifically, in person naming. He presented faces of famous people to subjects, their task being to name the people. The information that the subjects were able to report when they were in TOTSs was categorized: The most reported information involved the person's profession, and where the person had last been encountered. But Yarmey also noted that phonemic information, such as the number of syllables, initial letters, and so forth, was often present and highly accurate. He concluded that although the target in a name search is a verbal representation, other more perceptual retrieval systems are also involved in retrieving the to-beremembered name.More recently, TOTSs have been investigated in everyday situations. Reason and Lucas (1984), who asked subjects to keep diaries of naturally occurring TOTSs, reported that both common and proper names provoked This study was supported by ESRC Studentship C00428625014 to Tim Brennen and ESRC Project Grant XC1525000l to Vicki Bruce. We are grateful to Andy Young, Dibs Hellawell, and the referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Please send reprint requests to Tim Brennen, Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG? 2RD, U.K.TOTSs, but that the latter predominated. Cohen and Faulkner (1986) reported a diary study of "name blocks" for proper names specifically, in which subjects were asked to give extensive details each time a block was experienced, They found that the majority of name blocks occurred for names of friends and acquaintances.Recent work by Hanley and Cowell (1988) used a TOTS-inducing procedure to investigate V. Bruce and Young's (1986) fun...

Movement related cortical potentials in a face naming task: Influence of the tip-of-the-tongue state

“…As regards the performance, the percentage of TOT responses (19%) was consistent with previous reports (Brennen et al, 1990;Díaz et al, 2007;Yarmey, 1973). The RT was significantly longer during the TOT category than in the other two categories, as observed in the study of Díaz et al (2007) and in previous studies (Maril et al, 2001(Maril et al, , 2005.…”

Reconciling phonological neighborhood effects in speech production through single trial analysis

“…With healthy speakers, words from dense neighborhoods tend to be less amenable to tipof-the-tongue (ToT) states than words from sparse neighborhoods (e.g., Brennen et al, 1990;Brown & McNeill, 1966;Burke et al, 1991;Harley & Bown, 1998;James & Burke, 2000;Vitevitch & Sommers, 2003). This observation is consistent with Meyer and Bock's (1992) findings that phonologically related cues help the resolution of ToT states, compared to unrelated ones (semantically related cues do not show any benefit).…”

The phenomenology of real and illusory tip-of-the-tongue states

“…On the other hand, some research has defined TOTs as the state of having partial knowledge about an item for which we are experiencing a feeling of knowing (see Schwartz, 1999;Vigliocco, Antonini, & Garrett, 1997). In general, these two approaches are compatible, because all studies have shown that TOTs are correlated with objective indices of memory, such as retrieval of the first letter, a syllable, grammatical gender, synonyms, homonyms, or semantically related information (Brennan, Baguley, Bright, & Bruce, 1990;A. S. Brown, 1991;Koriat & Lieblich, 1974;Miozzo & Caramazza, 1997;Vigliocco et al, 1997).…”