Tip of the tongue

Tip of the tongue (also known as TOT or lethologica) is the phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word or term from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The phenomenon's name comes from the saying, 'It's on the tip of my tongue.' The tip of the tongue phenomenon reveals that lexical access occurs in stages. Tip of the tongue (also known as TOT or lethologica) is the phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word or term from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The phenomenon's name comes from the saying, 'It's on the tip of my tongue.' The tip of the tongue phenomenon reveals that lexical access occurs in stages. People experiencing the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon can often recall one or more features of the target word, such as the first letter, its syllabic stress, and words similar in sound and/or meaning. Individuals report a feeling of being seized by the state, feeling something like mild anguish while searching for the word, and a sense of relief when the word is found. While many aspects of the tip-of-the-tongue state remain unclear, there are two major competing explanations for its occurrence, the direct-access view and the inferential view. The direct-access view posits that the state occurs when memory strength is not enough to recall an item, but is strong enough to trigger the state. The inferential view claims that TOTs aren't completely based on inaccessible, yet activated targets; rather they arise when the rememberer tries to piece together different clues about the word. Emotional-induced retrieval often causes more TOT experiences than an emotionally neutral retrieval, such as asking where a famous icon was assassinated rather than simply asking the capital city of a state. Emotional TOT experiences also have a longer retrieval time than non-emotional TOT experiences. The cause of this is unknown but possibilities include using a different retrieval strategy when having an emotional TOT experience rather than a non-emotional TOT experience, fluency at the time of retrieval, and strength of memory. TOT states should be separated from FOK (feeling of knowing) states. FOK, in contrast, is the feeling that one will be able to recognize - from a list of items - an item that is currently inaccessible. There are still currently opposing articles of the separability of the process underlying these concepts. However, there is some evidence that TOTs and FOKs draw on different parts of the brain. TOTs are associated with the anterior cingulate, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and right inferior cortex while FOKs are not. An occasional tip-of-the-tongue state is normal for people of all ages. TOT becomes more frequent as people age. TOT is only a medical condition when it becomes frequent enough to interfere with learning or daily life. This disorder is called anomic aphasia when acquired by brain damage, usually from a head injury, stroke, or dementia. The tip of the tongue phenomenon has implications for research in psycholinguistics, memory, and metacognition. The term 'tip of the tongue' is borrowed from colloquial usage, and possibly a calque from the French phrase avoir le mot sur le bout de la langue ('having the word on the tip of the tongue'). The tip of the tongue phenomenon was first described as a psychological phenomenon in the text The Principles of Psychology by William James (1890), although he did not label it as such. Sigmund Freud also discussed unconscious psychological factors, such as unconscious thoughts and impulses that might cause forgetting familiar words. The first empirical research on this phenomenon was undertaken by Harvard researchers Roger Brown and David McNeill and published in 1966 in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. Brown and McNeill wanted to determine whether the feeling of imminent retrieval experienced in the tip of the tongue state was based on actual retrieval ability or was just an illusion. In their study, Brown and McNeill read out definitions of rare words to the study participants and asked them to name the object being defined, and the target word was later read by the experimenter. Participants were instructed to report whether they experienced a tip of the tongue state. Three types of positive TOT states were identified by Brown and McNeill: