There were many psychologists in the 1950s that impacted the
development of cognitive psychology. One of them was Roger Brown. Brown greatly
influenced social psychology, language, child development, and memory. His work
went on to explain how limited thoughts impact language. This idea was
explained in his book Words and Things that
he published in 1958. He also made a lot of discoveries on how language was
learned in children. Brown also developed a lot of early research for the topic
of flashbulb memory. However, one of his most important influences in
psychology was his work with David McNeill on the tip of the tongue phenomenon
(TOT) in 1966.
The tip of the tongue phenomenon deals with the inability to recover
something that the person knows they can recall. The problem with trying to
study this phenomenon is that it does not happen that often and no one can know
when it is going to happen. However, Brown and McNeill were able to find a way
to make this happen intentionally. Their study was done to measure the degree
of closeness to the word trying to be recovered. They told the subjects a
definition of a word that is not used in everyday context but is a word that
the subjects still know. Then they asked the participants to recall the word. The
researchers found that the subjects experienced three different reactions when
asked to recall the word. The first was that the participants did not know the
word. The second reaction was that the participants might know the word, and
the third, and the most important, was that they would know it but be unable to
say it. The last reaction is the tip of the tongue phenomenon. If they
experienced this, the participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire that
asked questions such as what do they believe the first letter of the word is
and how many syllables does it have and if they could think of any words of
similar sound or meaning. Brown and McNeill were able to induce tip of the
tongue experiences over 200 times. The results showed that participants who
experience tip of the tongue phenomenon usually could recall the correct number
of syllables and guess the first letter and could think of similar words. This
study was important because it showed the true essence of cognitive psychology
and exactly what it was about.
Timeline: Tip-of-the-tongue
phenomenon 1966
The two of us
went on the London Eye this past weekend. Photo taken July 18, 2015. The link
is the London Eye website.
https://www.londoneye.com
Benjamin,
L. T. (2014). A brief history of modern psychology (2nd ed.).
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
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