Chapter 1 - Introduction and History of Research on Tip-of-the-Tongue States

Summary

This book is a scientific discussion of tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. First, the TOT state is a subjective experience – a feeling. Second, the feeling is about retrieval. The TOT state is a feeling that we can or will remember something. Brown and McNeill (1966) introduced the term “prospecting” into the language of TOT state research, which meant presenting rare-word definitions to participants and asking them to identify the word for each, and when unable to do so, assessing if they were in a TOT state for it. Brown and McNeill showed that TOTs can be captured in the lab, and that TOTs are accurate at predicting later memory performance. They set the stage for the next fifty-plus years of research on TOTs. Subsequent models focused on both how retrieval breaks down during a TOT state and what causes the subjective experience of a TOT state.