Can the Tip of the Tongue state (ToT) disentangle processes in spoken word retrieval?

Abstract:

William James (1950) described the Tip of the Tongue (ToT) state as a 'gap that is intensely active'. This gap is like a window, from which word retrieval and the relative order of access to phonological and syntactic information can be observed. Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer (1999) propose that syntactic information is accessible earlier than phonological information and might even "mediate" between semantics and phonology. Caramazza (1997) makes the opposite assumption in the IN model, which claims that phonology is accessible independently from syntax. This study investigates the availability of grammatical gender and mass/count information versus initial phoneme information, when speakers are induced to be in a Tip of the Tongue state. 40 English and 47 German speakers are asked to participate in a naming to definition task. The results of both speaker groups cannot support either a syntactic or a phonological "mediation" during word retrieval.

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