Sparkling at the end of the tongue: The etiology of tip-of-the-tongue phenomenology

The tip-of-the-tongue experience (TOT) is the phenomenological experience t hat a currently inaccessible word is stored in memory and will be retrieved . TOTs appear to be a universal experience that occurs frequently in everyd ay life, making the TOT an ideal case study in human phenomenology. This pa per considers TOTs in light of Tulving's (1989) challenge to the doctrine o f concordance, which is the assumption that behavior, cognition, and phenom enology are correlated, if not caused by identical processes. Psycholinguis tic and memory theories, consistent with concordance, argue for direct acce ss, or the view that TOTs and word retrieval are caused by the same retriev al processes. The metacognition view challenges concordance and views TOTs as an inference based on nontarget information that is accessible to rememb erers. Current data, reviewed here, suggest that TOTs are caused via direct access and through inferential processes. Dissociations between TOTs and r etrieval suggest that the causes of TOT phenomenology and the processes of retrieval are not identical.