Partial Information and the Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

Name That Tune: Eliciting the Tip-of-the-Tongue Experience Using Auditory Stimuli

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1995.77.3f.1379 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 77 (3_suppl) ◽

pp. 1379-1390 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

David M. Reefer ◽

Mary K. Kevari ◽

Daniel L. F. Kramer

Keyword(s):

Recognition Test ◽

Partial Information ◽

High Accuracy ◽

Auditory Stimuli ◽

Similarities And Differences ◽

Tip Of The Tongue ◽

Competing Responses

An experiment was conducted to assess whether auditory stimuli could elicit the tip-of-the-tongue state. Subjects were presented segments of 50 television theme songs and asked to indicate the tide of the corresponding show. Twenty-one percent of ail retrieval attempts resulted in an experience of the tip-of-the-tongue state, with women reporting more such experiences than men. The majority of these experiences contained partial information about the target such as the show's characters, actors, or outline. Subjects in the tip-of-the-tongue state were also able to identify the genre and era of the target show with high accuracy and pick it out amongst distractors in a recognition test. Competing responses were relatively infrequent and were usually semantically related to the target show. The similarities and differences between auditory-induced tip-of-the-tongue states and those for other stimuli are discussed.

Download Full-text

Tip-of-the-tongue states in Hebrew–English bilinguals

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s136672890100013x ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 63-83 ◽

Cited By ~ 102

Author(s):

Tamar H. Gollan ◽

Nina B. Silverberg

Keyword(s):

Word Frequency ◽

Lexical Access ◽

Correct Response ◽

Partial Information ◽

Grammatical Gender ◽

Spontaneous Resolution ◽

Tip Of The Tongue ◽

Target Words

Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) in proficient Hebrew–English bilinguals were compared to those of age-matched monolinguals. Monolinguals retrieved words in English, and bilinguals retrieved words from both languages. Results showed an increased TOT rate in bilinguals. However, bilinguals demonstrated comparable rates of spontaneous resolution, and similar ability to access partial information about target words. Interestingly, bilinguals named the same number of targets as monolinguals when naming an item in either language was counted as a correct response. Besides bilingualism, other factors that predicted TOT rate included word frequency (only for bilinguals), and age (younger participants had more TOTs). Unexpectedly, TOTs for Hebrew targets were not characterized by increased access to grammatical gender and number of syllables relative to control states, thus contrasting notably with TOTs for Italian and English targets respectively. We discuss these results in terms of their relevance for constraining models of bilingual lexical access and models of TOT.

Download Full-text

Comparing Auditory vs Visual Stimuli in the Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.2002.90.2.568 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 90 (2) ◽

pp. 568-576 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

David M. Riefer

Keyword(s):

Incidence Rate ◽

Partial Information ◽

Visual Stimuli ◽

Direct Access ◽

Television Shows ◽

Response Set ◽

Auditory Cue ◽

Cue Familiarity ◽

Alternative Responses ◽

Tip Of The Tongue

An experiment is reported comparing the effectiveness of auditory and visual stimuli in eliciting the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. 30 participants were asked to name the tides of 27 television shows. Half of the participants were given segments of the theme song for each show (auditory cue), and half were shown the cast photographs for each show (visual cue). Participants were asked to report whenever they experienced the tip-of-the-tongue state. There were no significant differences between the auditory and visual stimuli in terms of the incidence rate for the tip-of-the-tongue state, the amount of partial information that participants provided in their responses, or the frequency of interlopers (alternative responses that persistently come to mind). These findings suggest that the characteristics of the tip-of-the-tongue state are determined more by the nature of the response set than by the type of stimuli used as cues. The results are inconsistent with inferential theories of the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, such as the cue familiarity hypothesis and, instead, tend to support direct-access hypotheses.

Download Full-text