Chapter 4 - Tip-of-the-Tongue State Etiology

Summary

This chapter covers the various theorized causes of TOT states put forward over the years. The direct-access approach postulates that TOT states are caused by privileged access to the strength of a word’s representation in memory. Several models have been advanced to account for TOT states using this approach. We review the Transmission Deficit Model and a more general “Two-Step” model approach, followed by a review of the Interactive Competition Activation (IAC) model of TOT states for people’s names in response to seeing their faces. The inferential approach postulates that TOT states are caused by a number of accessible heuristic cues and clues, such as the familiarity or fluency of the cue or cues in the environment, and the presence, quantity, or fluency of perceived partial target or retrieved related information. The metacognitive-heuristic model predicts TOT states based on the accumulation of heuristic information. We also review some alternative theoretical approaches worthy of noting: blocking theory and our newly put forward possibility that TOT states can potentially result from unresolved competition among candidate word representations.