Wouldn’t it be awesome to say that you remember everything? Not just an incredible memory, but actually unable to forget anything. That would make things like studying and learning languages really easy. You could prepare and memorize an impeccable speech in just a couple minutes. And you won’t have to worry about forgetting even one word. Sounds like a perfect world, after all, isn’t it the worst feeling when you know what you’re trying to say but forget the right words to say it. The words feel like they are about to jump out of your mouth…but all that comes out is confusing jibber.
This phenomenon is known as “tip of your tongue.” Psychologists have proposed several theories trying to describe this, but two rise as the top theories. The first, direct-access is when the strength of the target memory or word is strong enough for the individual to recognize its “existence” in their memory but not quite strong enough for the individual to recall it. The second theory is the inferential view, this theory says that the person can recall and recognize cues of the word, what it look like what color it is, if its old or new ect. but cannot remember the word. Its like the person can remember things that are all connected to the word but cannot remember the word itself.
How often someone can experience this feeling can depend on a number of things, everything from age to emotion. It may be obvious that as people grow older they complain of having it more often, but they report that the episodes last longer and often never find the right word. Studies show that as you get older you have less cues and less alternate words. Caffeine can also have an effect on people. A study that involved participants taking either an equivalent of two cups of coffee (about 200 mg of caffeine) or a placebo pill showed that the people who consumed caffeine had fewer tip of the tongue experiences. It has been found that a tip of the tongue episode that carries significant emotional attachments take longer to retrieve the word than if you don’t have any emotional attachment to the situation. When you have an emotional relationship to the word you may continue to recall the same cue over and over rather than searching for other cues that may more efficiently bring you to the right word.
Whatever the reason for the phenomenon there is ignoring the fact that it happens to every one, and that we can all agree that it can be very frustrating and irritating.
I think you provided a great description and explanation of the tip of the tongue effect. Of course most of us believed we’d love to remember everything as you mentioned. Did you ever read those Cam Jansen books as a kid about the girl with the photographic memory? Unfortunately as we learned in class, life would be extremely difficult with such a memory and there is actually an evolutionary basis and need to forget certain information. Of course, the tip of the tongue effect is often more frustrating that actually forgetting the information.
I liked the theories that you highlighted explaining the effect. Those theories all highlight the web or network of associations that we create. I wonder if other encoding could also be applied in explaining the tip of the tongue. You mentioned problems in retrieval, but can not properly encoding information into LTM also lead to this effect?
Finally, with how many negative connotations there are associated with caffeine, I was totally shocked that increased coffee actually correlates with a decreased T of the T effect! I wonder why caffeine helps? My first assumption is that caffeine like other drugs such as adderall are stimulants and therefore increase the activity of your neural network.