Recurrence and Resolution of TOTs in Young vs Older Adults

A tip of the tongue (TOT) state occurs when one is unable to produce a desired word despite the feeling of imminent recall (Brown & McNeill, 1966). Although the transmission deficit hypothesis (TDH; Burke, MacKay, Worthley, & Wade, 1991), the dominant model currently used to explain the underlying cause of TOTs, can be extended to explain other related TOT phenomena, the error learning hypothesis was recently proposed as an explanation for persistent or recurring TOTs (D'Angelo & Humphreys, 2015; Warriner & Humphreys, 2008). The purpose of this study was to assess the error learning hypothesis and TDH by comparing their predictions for the effects of retrieval interval time on recurring TOTs. Specifically, three questions were examined: (1) Is the error learning effect replicable? (2) Do TOT recurrence rates differ by age? (3) Are persistent alternates generated during the forced retrieval interval? Fifty-one young and 48 older adults were retested on 100 TOT-inducing stimuli with a 48-hour delay in a a 2 (age: young, old) x 2 (test: initial, 48-hour delay) x 2 (retrieval condition during initial test: immediate answer, 30 second forced retrieval) mixed factorial design. Test was a within-subjects factor, and age and retrieval condition were between-groups factors.

The following SPSS files track the responses on Day 1 and Day 2 as well as whether they changed across testing sessions. Only TOT responses for the correct word were included in the analyses (“correct TOTs”). When the participant responded “TOT” but at the final test indicated that they were thinking of a different word than the intended target, the response was dropped from further analysis in the manuscript. These data were collected as part of the author's dissertation titled "Recurring tots: Error learning or transmission deficit?"