Studying TOT presents certain challenges to psychologists who want to understand how and why such states occur. Much like astronomers who study ephemeral phenomena like supernovas, researchers know that TOT states will eventually happen, but not exactly when. This uncertainty has led to two distinctly different ways of investigating TOTs: via naturalistic methods and by experimentally inducing word-finding failures in laboratory settings.
Researchers studying word finding and TOT have tried to quantify two aspects in particular: how often these states occur and the likelihood that they are resolved – that is, the sought-after word is spontaneously recalled by the person without external assistance (such as looking the word up or having a friend offer the solution).
Diary studies, in which people write down every time they experience a TOT state, allow researchers to assess both frequency and resolution rates. The results suggest that college students experience about one to two TOT states a week, while for people in their 60s and early 70s, the rate is slightly higher. Research participants in their 80s, however, experience TOT states at a rate almost twice as high as college students. Diary studies have shown that TOT episodes are likely to be resolved – the typical success rate in such studies is more than 90%.
Simply giving participants dictionary definitions of uncommon English words would often trigger a word-finding failure
We need to be cautious, however, when interpreting such naturalistic data. It may be the case that older adults, who are more concerned about their memory lapses, will be more likely to record such instances. They may be more conscientious about writing them down, perhaps because their lives are less hectic than those of younger participants. It may also be the case that participants are simply more likely to record resolved TOT states than episodes that are not resolved.
The alternative method for studying word finding is to experimentally induce a TOT state. A method for doing this was developed by psychologists Roger Brown and David McNeill when they were both at Harvard University. They found that simply giving participants dictionary definitions of uncommon English words would often trigger a word-finding failure. An example from their study was: “A navigational instrument used in measuring angular distances, especially the altitude of the Sun, Moon, and stars at sea.”
(If this example has caused a TOT state for you, then the word you are searching for is “sextant”.)
In this study, the participants were often able to provide the desired word without difficulty. On other occasions, the subjects had no idea what word the definition was describing. However, if they found themselves in a TOT state, Brown and McNeill asked them additional questions. The researchers discovered that, while in such a state, people can report partial information about the sought-after word, even as the word itself eludes their grasp.
Solvin Zankl/Alamy
For example, the participants performed far above chance when asked to guess how many syllables the word had, or what its initial letter might be. And not surprisingly, when people made errors, they often produced words that had a similar meaning. When given the definition for “sextant”, the participants sometimes responded with “astrolabe” or “compass”. However, they also sometimes offered up words that only sounded like the intended term. The definition for “sextant” also led to responses of “sextet” and “sexton”.