Tip-of-the-Tongue Research

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon occurs during language production when an individual knows the word or name that they are attempting to produce, but for some reason, at that moment, they are unable to do so. The feeling is very much as if the word/name is on the tip of the tongue and that production is imminent, and is often associated with feelings of frustration. Often this can be studied in laboratory settings by presenting participants with a words definition or a famous individual’s photograph. These stimuli offer the participant some semantic information about a word or name of interest, however, often the syntactic information needed for language production is lacking or missing completely.

Much of my early career as an Applied Cognitive Psychologist–specifically during my undergraduate years at Saint Louis University and Master’s program at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs–consisted of work in several research labs that focused on the impact of various psychosocial factors on language producation ability.

It was during this particular line of research that I was lucky enough to meet and collaborate with Tony W. Buchanan, PhD, who eventually assumed the roll as both my Undergraduate Academic and Undergraduate Research Advisor. Dr. Buchanan headed the Cognitive Neuroscience of Stress Lab at Saint Louis University. As a research assistant in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Stress Lab, I (1) had my first experience in physiological and psychological data collection and (2) had my first experience with collecting data on how psychosocial stress impacted language production, namely the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

After the culmination of my undergraduate career I moved to Colorado Springs, CO to work with Lori E. James, PhD at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. During my years at UCCS Dr. James and I collaborated on a project that would later be my M.A. Thesis project looking at how evaluative observation impacted language production, namely the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon amongst young and older adult participants. Working under the supervision of Dr. James I successfully completed my M.A. in Psychological Science with a Concentration in Cognition.