Resolving semantically induced tip-of-the-tongue states for proper nouns

Abstract

Three experiments are reported in which tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTSs) were induced in subjects by reading them pieces of item-specific information. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects attempted toname famous people. These experiments showed that, in a TOTS, seeing a picture of the faceof the target person did not facilitate naming, whereas the initials of the person's name did. In Experiment 3, a similar result was obtained with a landmark-naming task. The results of the experiments are discussed with reference to current models of memory structure and name retrieval. © 1990 Psychonomic Society, Inc.