This is what happens in your brain when you can’t recall a word - Cella Wright — Transcript

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1. 0:07You’re sure you know your third grade teacher’s name—
2. 0:10it’s like you’re hovering over it in your mind,
3. 0:12but it just won’t materialize.
4. 0:15Researchers call this tantalizing torment a “tip-of-the-tongue state,”
5. 0:20and it's something everyone experiences.
6. 0:23But what's actually happening when a word gets caught here?
7. 0:26And how can you best get it unstuck?
8. 0:29Most of the time, our brains seamlessly summon words
9. 0:33from vast stores of knowledge,
10. 0:35paring their meaning and sounds, and stringing them into sentences.
11. 0:39But in a tip-of-the-tongue moment, this retrieval process derails,
12. 0:44and there's the sensation of remembering the word
13. 0:47but the struggle to recall it.
14. 0:49In these moments,
15. 0:50on top of the usual brain activity associated with word retrieval,
16. 0:55we also see other brain regions light up,
17. 0:58like the conflict-detecting anterior cingulate,
18. 1:01which generates that urgently frustrating feeling.
19. 1:04It's unclear whether the target word is directly detected
20. 1:08and just not successfully recalled,
21. 1:10or associations are simply helping the brain infer that it has the word.
22. 1:16The reality could also be some combination of these hypotheses.
23. 1:20But the experience is pretty consistent
24. 1:23with how psycholinguistic theorists think
25. 1:25we mentally organize language-related information,
26. 1:29going from the word's meaning and associations to how it sounds.
27. 1:33Some researchers think that the last layer of information— sound—
28. 1:38might be the most vulnerable to glitches.
29. 1:41Lots of things seem to influence how likely you are
30. 1:45to enter a tip-of-the-tongue state,
31. 1:47all the way from what kinds of words are involved,
32. 1:49to your experiences and environment.
33. 1:52For example, tip-of-the-tongue states occur most frequently with proper nouns,
34. 1:58infrequently used words, and ones that are more abstract and less visual,
35. 2:03like “idiosyncrasy” or “revelation.”
36. 2:06Cognitively, recognizing a face and associating it with general information,
37. 2:11like someone’s profession, is often easy, while names tend to trip us up.
38. 2:18And retrieval of unintended words is also a common problem.
39. 2:22Like if you’re trying to summon the star of “The Wizard of Oz’s” name
40. 2:26and keep getting stuck on Dorothy instead of Judy Garland.
41. 2:31In these situations, the words seem to work
42. 2:34as distracting, red herring-like blockers in the retrieval pathway.
43. 2:40And one study found that stressful test conditions
44. 2:43made participants report more tip-of-the-tongue experiences,
45. 2:47suggesting that environmental conditions, including stress, can exacerbate them.
46. 2:53But some people tend to have more tip-of-the-tongue moments than others.
47. 2:57This seems to be true for people who speak multiple languages—
48. 3:01perhaps because they know more than one word to describe the same thing.
49. 3:05So a word in one language might become an interfering blocker
50. 3:10for the target word in another.
51. 3:13This seems to be especially true when someone’s switching between languages—
52. 3:17but it might also depend on their fluency:
53. 3:20one study suggested that people who learned their second language
54. 3:23before age five
55. 3:25had fewer tip-of-the-tongue stumbles.
56. 3:28And sometimes even just hearing a language participants didn’t know
57. 3:32has proven to be enough to increase their tip-of-the-tongue incidents.
58. 3:36They also seem to rise with age,
59. 3:39perhaps from a cognitive decline in speech-related brain areas,
60. 3:43greater accumulation of knowledge to search through,
61. 3:46or a combination of both.
62. 3:49But while tip-of-the-tongue states may feel like the brain is failing,
63. 3:53they seem to have a positive function.
64. 3:57Words don't usually go past the point of no return
65. 4:00and get permanently forgotten
66. 4:02so much as they tend to get tougher to access.
67. 4:05That tough-to-shake, tip-of-the-tongue feeling
68. 4:09of impending success just around the corner
69. 4:12may help motivate us and make us more likely to remember.
70. 4:17And researchers have observed that participants in tip-of-the-tongue states
71. 4:21are more likely to spend more time and effort searching for answers.
72. 4:27One method for getting something off the tip of your tongue is cueing.
73. 4:31This means leaning into the clues your brain surfaces,
74. 4:35like associated memories and letters.
75. 4:38For example, if you're trying to remember the name of the ancient city
76. 4:43with the legendary Hanging Gardens,
77. 4:46you might recall they’re one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
78. 4:50and run through the alphabet to see if any letters stand out.
79. 4:54Because tip-of-the-tongue moments don’t seem to be just your brain babbling,
80. 4:59but perhaps trying to jog its own extensive memory,
81. 5:03where your third grade teacher’s name is surely stored... somewhere.