CONTEXT GOT YOUR TONGUE? OVERCOMING TIP-OF-THE-TONGUE STATES VIA CONTEXTUAL CHANGE

Abstract

The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state—the feeling of being on the verge of accessing a word that has not yet come to mind—happens to everyone but can increase in frequency as people age or experience certain neurological conditions. Research shows that a TOT state for a given sought-after word will tend to be repeated at a later time if not self-resolved, and that self-resolution reduces the likelihood of a TOT state recurring. Although simply providing people with the target word does not reduce the likelihood of a future TOT recurrence for that word, inducing self-resolution with phonological or orthographic cues does reduce TOT recurrence. An issue is that in real life, a person experiencing a TOT state for a word cannot easily obtain a phonological or orthographic cue to help them self-resolve the TOT state, as there is no third-party supplier of such cues. Based on problem-solving work suggesting that changing one’s context (i.e., changing one’s surroundings) helps with forgetting fixating ideas to arrive at the solution to a problem (e.g., Smith & Beda, 2020), the present study examined whether contextual change can facilitate TOT self-resolution in older and younger adults. Support for this hypothesis was not found; in both older and younger adults, TOT resolution was no more likely when screen background images changed than when they were reinstated. However, TOT rates decreased from Phase 3 to Phase 5, consistent with new research on increased TOT resolution with continued retrieval attempts, and self-resolution decreased TOT recurrence. Finally, although older adults reported more TOTs than younger adults, older adults also answered significantly more questions.