Isolating phonological components that increase tip-of-the-tongue resolution.
Three experiments investigated the role of specific phonological components in priming tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) resolution. When in a TOT state, participants read a list of words that included phonological primes intermixed among unrelated words. The phonological primes contained either the same first letter as the target (Experiment 1), a single syllable (first, middle, or last) of the target (Experiment 2), or the first phoneme or first syllable of the target (Experiment 3). Reading first-letter primes in Experiment 1 did not help to resolve TOTs, whereas reading first-syllable primes significantly increased word retrieval in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiments 1 and 2 using first-phoneme primes instead of first-letter primes and using two primes instead of three, although first-syllable priming occurred only for primes read silently. The results of these experiments support a transmission deficit model, where TOTs are caused by weak connections among phonological representations and can be resolved through internal or overt production of specific phonology.
Abrams
Lise
L
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611-2250, USA. abrams@ufl.edu
White
Katherine K
KK
Eitel
Stacy L
SL
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D011897:Random Allocation; D013060:Speech; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires