Up to this point our class readings have mainly revolved around broad ideas in memory research—different levels of memory, recall and retrieval. We have also studied anomalies and irregularities such as amnesia and synesthesia. And while the ideas seem concrete at face value, truly understanding their nature has yielded less than solid results, and we are often left to rely on inference and interpretation. How ironic it is, then, that the study of such a frustrating experience as the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon could be so satisfying. I found this week’s readings “satisfying” for a few reasons.
Firstly, all the readings worked together by providing different viewpoints of the same subject. While Schwartz offered an array of theories explaining the etiology of TOT, the Maril study gave sound neurological evidence linking certain parts of the brain (the anterior cingulated cortex and lateral prefrontal cortex) to the processes of conflict detection and retrieval monitoring that accompany TOT. And Schacter does what he does best—presenting cognitive theory, neurological study, and human story together in a cohesive text. Just as there are many interweaving ways to interpret TOT data, there are many ways in which these readings support each other and enrich our overall understanding. Unlike many other subjects in memory research, TOT lends itself easily to examination in multiple fields of study.
And speaking of examination, TOT is a pleasure because it can be so well studied in the laboratory. The factors are not only easy to control, but also easy to calculate. The results are definitive—one either knows, doesn’t know, or has TOT, and factors such as time and cues are easily quantifiable.
Another reason why TOT study is so satisfying is because it tends to ring true. It is a universal phenomenon, meaning that everyone exactly what TOT feels like. Unlike other specific phenomena such as amnesia, we all have personal experience with TOT, which we can reflect upon when evaluating different theories. It is pleasing to find that the findings and theories of well-respected experts of psychology, neurology, and cognitive science match up with your own intuitions on the same subject. Even the technical psychological term, “tip-of-the-tongue,” is intuitive, having originated from colloquial usage. TOT study is utterly accessible.
While it is safe to assume that TOT is universal, it is evident from the readings that there are many differing views and theories on why it occurs. As someone with a lifetime of experience with TOT, which theories most ring true for you? How exactly do you explain this feeling with which you are so familiar?
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It's true, TOTs seem to be universal and easily studied. The evidence that many languages include the word “tongue” in their common phrase for it seems to show that it is a very specific shared experience. The fact that an experiential example and so many words are needed to describe TOT and the fact that it conjures up so many different images (like a wraith within a gap, a feral beast that strikes without warning, a sparkling, a tingling, being on the brink of a sneeze, and being seized or in torment) speak to the importance of language and labeling both in memory research and in human experience.
Shacter's section on how Italians could recall the gender of nouns without recalling the noun itself—how “people can produce nearly everything they know about a word except its label"—led me to ask how important the links between visual, conceptual, lexical, and phonological representation are. Perhaps these readings were so satisfying because they helped provide us with a more concrete lexical understanding of something we all understand experientially. That is, the articles helped give us labels and ways of talking about a concept with which we're all familiar. I am too unfamiliar with psychological and neurological aspects of language to do anything but ask questions. How important is the gap between a participant's personal experience with a TOT state and the words he uses to describe it? Can neurology fill this gap? What else are we missing in general memory research by focusing so much on labels (such as list-learning experiments), when the participant might remember nearly everything they know about the words on the list except their labels? Might these studies be telling us more about linguistics than Memory?
I find it hard to agree fully with Carolyn's assertion that TOT is so easy to study. Factors such as time and cues are easily quantifiable—and so our human compulsion to label things and quantify things is satisfied. These numbers can be used to provide statistic explanations of TOT, but what do they get us that we, or any kindergarteners, aren't already aware of? And what about those instances where our participants have a TOT experience but resolve it before being able to write the whole title of the film—or within a second or two? Should we further divide Brown and McNeill's “nearer/farther” TOT distinction into extremely “near,” “nearer,” “farther,” and “so far I won't be able to see it until tomorrow when I'm riding my bike and think up something that sounds like it”? Where does the division and labeling end, and how definitive are the results really?
Based on how much people are able to recall about a word in TOT experiences, it would be interesting to look at what kind of visual cues they get about the word. For example, for most of the movie stars that I had TOT for, I could clearly see their faces and, in some cases, could list other movies they had been in. Even for words that are not proper nouns, i usually have some concept of what the meaning of the word looks like. For example, i was blanking on the word "outburst" earlier today but had a very vivid image of angry words coming out of my mouth. Does this imagery help people recover words faster or is it more akin to the "ugly stepsister" phenomenon?
TOT is easy and yet complicated to study, it's easy, because as other said, almost everyone experiences it on a fairly regular basis. What complicates this matter is trying to explain why it happens, when it happens: what is causing the words to block? do you only think you ought to know it (for example several of the movies I experienced TOT, saw the lead actor/actress in my mind, but for the life of me could not remember who they were... it turns out I didn't even recognize their names on the list... I had seen the movie so often, that I assumed I knew the actress' name)? Are the words blocked because you are trying to do to many things at once? does tiredness have an effect? Then there are other individualized factors that go into the TOT. While doing the film TOT experiment, I most often visualized a face or scene from the movie long before I could come up with a name. Others however may not need that visual cue, or not have a visual cue. In general with TOT different people do very different things to cue themselves; often coming up with words of the same or almost the same meaning. I often come up with the Italian word of equivalent meaning (just because my brain likes playing tricks on me), however when I need the Italian word, I can generally only come up with the English word. The whys of individuals are hard to answer, and it would be difficult to even find a generalized answer.
I also thought the example of Italian gendered words as interesting. It's another detail/clue to help discover with the actual word is.
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