The Incidence of TOTs - Case Study Example

The Effects of Exposure and Frequency Conditions on TOT Incidence ABSTRACT The study investigated the effects of exposure and frequency conditions on the incidence of TOTs in pronunciation and meaningfulness rating tasks. 60 respondents were first asked to rate exposure items for both pronunciation and meaningfulness, followed by a definition task in which they were asked to generate the word that corresponded to the definitions read out. Results for the pronunciation task suggest that the pronunciation task, representing short-term exposure, significantly enhance the accuracy for low frequency words, but not for high frequency words. In addition, long term exposure, high frequency, non-exposure words were related with increased accuracy when compared to low frequency non-exposure words. On the other hand, results for the meaningfulness task indicate that the task significantly enhanced the accuracy for low frequency words, but not for high frequency words. On the other hand, for long-term exposure, high frequency non-exposure words were associated with increased accuracy than low frequency non-exposure words. Results lend support to the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis. INTRODUCTION The tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon has been acknowledged early on as an exciting, and yet exasperating experience. William James has vividly described this phenomenon in 1893 as a “state of consciousness consisting of a gap be beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term.” (Schwartz, 2002, p. 4). There are three recognized theories that discuss the causal factors that affects tip of the tongue experiences, namely, the blocking hypothesis, the incomplete activation hypothesis, and the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis. Jones (in Schwartz, 200) asserts that TOTs transpire when a related word garners more activation than the target word; ergo, the outcome is inhibition of the target word. The blocking theory posits that the presentation of phonological primes will reduce TOT resolution because such primes will inhibit the retrieval of the target word (Schwartz, 2002). The incomplete activation hypothesis, on the other hand, asserts that TOTs occur because the target is only activated incompletely; therefore, there is sensing of the target, but failure in retrieving it (Schwartz, 2002). The Inhibition Deficit hypothesis has also been investigated in relation to age-linked deficits in episodic recall. It has been found that older adults suffer increased interference from irrelevant information, which hinder the encoding and retrieval of relevant episodic information (Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Zacks & Hasher, 1994). The hypothesized interference from irrelevant information in the Inhibitory Deficit hypothesis also transpires during retrieval of word meaning in semantic processing, predicting age-linked decrements in language comprehension and in semantic memory tasks. Older adults do not show signs of allowing irrelevant information to intrude in word association and semantic priming tasks (Burke & Harrold, 1988). Finally, the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis (TDH) advocates that the relationship or connection between a word’s lexical and phonological nodes is weakened if they have not been activated recently. These, in effect, cause failures in retrieval (Burke, Mackay, Worthley, & Wade, 1991). Put in other terms, it posits that semantic information are stored in distinct places; semantic information are kept in a lemma, while phonological information are stored in a lexeme. TOTs occur when the connection between lemma and lexeme is not established. James and Burke (2000) investigated phonological priming of TOT states. Following the presentation of a question, the researchers primed participants while they were experiencing a TOT by presenting words that cumulatively contained all of the syllables of the missing word. For example, if the TOT word is abdicate, the primes are abstract, indigent, and truncate. One finding suggests that primes increased the probability of word retrieval relative to an unrelated word list. However, primes shared multiple phonological characteristics with the TOT word; that is, the same first, middle, and last syllable. This deems it impossible to isolate which phonological feature(s) were the most potent for TOT resolution. They theorized that remembering sound is as important as meaning in being able to retrieve a word. James and Burke then proceeded to ask 114 questions to 108 participants (72 participants in the first experiment and 36 participants in the second experiment). They were asked general-knowledge questions designed to evoke target words that are known to provoke a high rate of TOTs. For example, people were asked, "What word means to formally renounce a throne?" Target words-in this case, abdicate, included proper names and other seldom-used words (James & Burke, 2000). In selected trials, questions were preceded by a series of ten prime words which were pronounced, half of which shared at least one phonological feature of the target word. For instance, when abdicate was the target word, abstract was used as one of the prime words. Results suggest that when participants pronounced words sharing phonology with the target word, they made more correct responses and had fewer TOT experiences than when they were primed with words that did not have a similar sound to the target word (James & Burke, 2000). Eitel (2003) found further support for the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis in her study on the effects of phonological priming and word production on tip-of-the-tongue resolution. Her data suggested that since TOT resolution following first syllable primes was greater than the unrelated condition, while providing evidence against the blocking hypothesis which predicted that phonological primes would hinder resolution (Jones & Langford, 1987, as cited in Schwartz, 2002). However, first phoneme primes did not enhance TOT resolution compared to unrelated words. This indicates that first-phoneme and first-syllable phonology play fundamentally different roles in TOT resolution. Moreover, correlational analyses with vocabulary score also support this distinction, as only first-syllable priming increased as a function of better vocabulary. She surmised that participants who have strong vocabularies may have stronger connections between syllable nodes and lexical nodes, allowing them to reactivate first-syllable phonology more easily and retrieve the missing words (Eitel, 2002). The current lab research directly investigates the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis. An implication of this theory is that the recent access of connection will result in a reduction in TOTs. The hypotheses of the study are as follows: 1) if the Transmission Deficit model is supported, recent exposure will lead to a reduction of TOTs for items on a previously meaningful rating task, but not for those on a previous pronunciation task; 2) if the one-stage models are to be validated, recent exposure ought to lead to TOT reduction for all items presented in previous pronunciation and meaningfulness tasks; and 3) among the non-exposure items, high frequency words will be related with reduced TOTs than will low frequency words. METHOD Participants The participants are 40 undergraduate, English speaking students, consisting of 20 males and 20 females. Their ages ranged from 18 to 24 years old, with M = 18.62 years old, SD = .89). They are currently enrolled in either general or cognitive psychology courses. They participated in the study for course or extra credit. Materials The 60 target words utilized for the study have been chosen for their proven tendency to elicit TOT states (mainly Harley & Brown, 1998), and from the MCR Psycholinguistic Database (Clark, 1997). The within groups factor was exposure conditions, with two levels, 1) pre-exposure, where words were presented prior to definitions, and 2) non-exposure where words were not presented prior to definitions. The frequency conditions was also a within groups factor with two levels, 1) low frequency words (i.e. range from 1-9 per million, M =4), and 2) high frequency words (i.e. range from 100-200 per million, M = 134). Lastly, the between groups factor exposure type conditions also had two levels, 1) the pronunciation rating task, where pre-exposed words were rated for pronunciation, and 2) the meaningfulness rating task, where pre-exposed words are rated for their meaningfulness. Procedure The study consisted of three phases: 1) rating tasks for exposure items (between groups factor), 2) the non-verbal filler task, and 3) the definition task. Phase 1. Rating tasks for exposure items (between groups). Through simple random sampling, participants were assigned to either accomplish the pronunciation rating or the meaningfulness rating of 60 words. They were asked to rate either criterion using a 6-point likert scale; for pronunciation, 1 represented easy until 6 which denoted hard. For the meaningfulness scale, the ratings ranged from 1 – unknown to 6 – well known. For both groups, participants were given 10 minutes to accomplish rating the 60 words. Participants in each groups of raters were in turn assigned to one of the four versions of Group. This factor guaranteed that each item appeared for both levels of exposure, with different levels of the frequency condition for purposes of counterbalancing. Phase 2. Non-verbal filler task. For this phase, Raven’s Progressive Matrices were utilized as a non-verbal task. It allowed a 10-minute delay between exposure (Phase 1) and the definition task (Phase 3). Moreover, it kept both proactive and retroactive interference to a minimum. Phase 3. Definition task. A set of 60 definitions were read aloud, with 30 for non-exposure items, randomly sorted. Participants were then allotted 20 seconds to elicit the word that matched each definition. The response could then take one of three forms: 1) a known answer which is written down, 2) a ‘don’t know’ answer, represented by a tick, and 3) a TOT response which is also signified by a tick, along with related features (i.e. partial information) of the word that come to mind, also jotted down. One-way ANOVA was used for statistical analysis to find significant effects in both within and between groups factors, using a .05 level of significance. RESULTS The following are the mean percentages and the one-way ANOVA results for the pronunciation and meaningfulness rating tasks, respectively. Pronunciation Table 1. Mean percentages for pronunciation rating task. LF Exposure LF Non-exposure HF Exposure HF Non-Exposure 57.3 48.6 67.7 63.4 13.4 14.0 7.6 8.2 Table 2. One-way ANOVA for effect of a pronunciation rating task (short-term exposure) and frequency conditions on TOT incidence. Source of Variance SS df MS F Between groups 3,001 19 Within groups 10,687 60 Treatments 4,120 3 1,373 11.94* Residuals 6,567 57 115 Total 13,688 79 *.05 level of significance Table 2 shows the one-way ANOVA results for the pronunciation rating task. The significant F-value suggests that there is a significant difference between the exposure and non-exposure groups (F=11.94, p Read More