Comparing Auditory vs Visual Stimuli in the Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

An experiment is reported comparing the effectiveness of auditory and visual stimuli in eliciting the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. 30 participants were asked to name the tides of 27 television shows. Half of the participants were given segments of the theme song for each show (auditory cue), and half were shown the cast photographs for each show (visual cue). Participants were asked to report whenever they experienced the tip-of-the-tongue state. There were no significant differences between the auditory and visual stimuli in terms of the incidence rate for the tip-of-the-tongue state, the amount of partial information that participants provided in their responses, or the frequency of interlopers (alternative responses that persistently come to mind). These findings suggest that the characteristics of the tip-of-the-tongue state are determined more by the nature of the response set than by the type of stimuli used as cues. The results are inconsistent with inferential theories of the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, such as the cue familiarity hypothesis and, instead, tend to support direct-access hypotheses.