The well-known phenomenon ‘on the tip of the tongue’ implies having the sensation of knowing something, knowing it, but at the same time being unable to access it. Some studies have described that these types of uncomfortable situations are more frequent in older people, although they occur in all of us at some time. Who has not had the experience of knowing the name of a famous actor but not being able to say it because it does not just ‘leave his memory’? And the worst thing is when the names of other actors start to come out … all except the one you need to say.
This phenomenon continues to be studied by many psychologists, including David Facal and a group of researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela. This team carried out an investigation with 133 people of different age groups to find out if this phenomenon of having a word ‘on the tip of the tongue’ occurs more frequently in older people , and what is its relationship with other cognitive abilities .
In the study, 100 definitions were presented for participants to say their corresponding 100 words. These words, of not very frequent use, were classified in abstract common nouns (such as ‘ignorance’) or concrete (for example ‘spark plug’), proper names of places (such as ‘Paris’) or of famous people, and finally verbs and adjectives. They were asked to first say whether or not they knew the word corresponding to the definition, and then to say it out loud. When knowledge was given without the expression of the word, it was taken as the existence of the phenomenon ‘of the tip of the tongue’.
The results of the experiment showed, in summary, that the frequency with which the sensation of the word ‘on the tip of the tongue’ appears is positively associated with age . In addition, at an older age, a poorer performance in working memory and a lower speed in information processing were also obtained. Interestingly, it was observed that the frequency of the phenomenon ‘on the tip of the tongue’ increased the greater the slowness when processing the information in other types of tests.
Little by little the relationship between variables such as age, memory and access to vocabulary is being defined. This will allow you to suggest effective strategies and methods for training them.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
