Tip-of-the-Tongue experiences are one of those illusive oddities of human cognition. Like slips of the tongue, deeacute;jaagrave; vu, and visual illusions, TOTs dazzle us with their subjective strength, yet, at the same time, puzzle us with our frustrating inability to retrieve the desired word. This book discusses what little is known about TOTs and speculates about much of the rest of the riddle. Cognitive psychologists know a lot about processes but generally avoid issues of conscious experience and phenomenology. Because the larger goal of this book is to relate the TOT experience to the...

Tip-of-the-Tongue experiences are one of those illusive oddities of human cognition. Like slips of the tongue, deja vu, and visual illusions, TOTs dazzle us with their subjective strength, yet, at the same time, puzzle us with our frustrating inability to retrieve the desired word. This book discusses what little is known about TOTs and speculates about much of the rest of the riddle. Cognitive psychologists know a lot about processes but generally avoid issues of conscious experience and phenomenology. Because the larger goal of this book is to relate the TOT experience to the study of human...

Human memory, like other biological systems, has been subject to natural selection over the course of evolution. However, cognitive systems do not fossilize, which means that current researchers must infer evolutionary influences on human memory from current human behavior rather than from fossils or artifacts. Examining the potential for cognition as adaptation has often been ignored by cognitive psychology. Recently, a number of researchers have identified variables that affect human memory that may reflect these ancestral influences. These include survival processing, future-oriented...

This volume seeks to assemble various works on the 'tip-of-the-tongue state' and related phenomena.