Do You Know The Phenomenon Of The Tip Of The Tongue?

Imagine that you are sitting in front of the television watching a quiz. A question appears about something you know. You really know the answer, but it is impossible for you to remember / access it. You have the feeling of knowing it. What is happening? Why can’t the “librarian” in your memory find it? What happens is that there has been a blockage in the recovery of the memory: the phenomenon of the tip of the tongue.

In many cases, recall is an automatic process. The retrieval of information from memory and in response to a stimulus is the specific part of memory that is very involuntary. What takes effort is the attempt to find the inner thoughts that allow us to retrieve the information.

The process of recovering memories is itself automatic. A certain stimulus gives rise to an automatic response. For example, riding a bike, doing our signature or driving a car, how do we do it automatically correctly?

The tip of the tongue phenomenon

Our memory is not perfect. Memory in fact fails frequently; furthermore, many of the mistakes it makes we are unable to detect. We speak of forgetfulness, lapses or modifications of memories.

An important area of ​​research in this field is that of the tip of the tongue phenomenon. This phenomenon is an example of the existence of something that we know and that we cannot recover immediately. Somehow, we know where we have to go to find that memory and we can even talk about elements related to it, but we cannot recover it.

The tip of the tongue phenomenon is an almost universal experience in which a person has difficulty retrieving a word or name that they know well. When we experience this phenomenon we feel that we are about to recover the word that has been blocked.

Despite the fact that we cannot find that word, we have the feeling that the word that has been blocked is “on the tip of the tongue” figuratively. The lack of accessibility to the word and the feeling of imminence regarding its recovery are two of the key characteristics that define the phenomenon of the tip of the tongue.

The first studies on the phenomenon of the tip of the tongue

The phenomenon of the tip of the tongue has been studied in detail since the first empirical study of it was carried out in 1966. In this study it was observed that people could remember many things about the word that they had in the tip of the language and also that they could recognize it as soon as it was presented to them.

Later, the researchers studied what was called the ugly sister effect. This effect consists of the repeated retrieval of wrong or different words in the process of searching for the correct word in our memory.

The “ugly sisters” had a superficial similarity to the correct word. However, they were used more frequently than the word that had been blocked.

People try all kinds of tricks or methods to “unlock” ourselves, which can be very frustrating. We review our internal and external world again and again in search of the solution. In some cases we even turn to the alphabet for solutions. Later, when we “stop trying to tear down that wall”, we can usually access the word without problems.

Interestingly, it has been observed that the clues or data that we can offer to a person who is in this situation can have a negative effect, causing the person to take longer  to remember the blocked word. In these cases, when the person searches his memory, all he remembers is the clue that we have offered him.

What have we learned about the tip of the tongue phenomenon?

First, the tip of the tongue phenomenon is a very common and possibly universal experience. One researcher analyzed 51 languages. It observed that 45 had expressions in which the word “language” was used to describe this phenomenon.

Second, the phenomenon of the tip of the tongue appears with a very high frequency, generally once a week. This frequency increases with age.

Third, it is often related to proper names. It is common that we can remember the first letter of the word we are looking for. We can remember the things that a person liked, their work activity and the color of their hair, but not their name.

Finally, fortunately we solve the problem about fifty percent of the time. So, if you regularly suffer from this phenomenon, don’t worry. It is a very frequent phenomenon and does not imply any pathology.