Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey wasn't a stop to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna start with a quick question. All right,
Speaker 1: I'll try to answers as fast as you can. This
Speaker 1: is for everybody. This is the listener. This is not
Speaker 1: a necessarily a meat reco question. Right, are you you
Speaker 1: out there listening? What's the word for a stone coffin,
Speaker 1: typically adorned with a sculpture or inscription and associated with
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt, Rome or Greece. Answer sarcophagus. Okay, a lot
Speaker 1: of you listeners probably knew that word. It does come
Speaker 1: up quite a bit. I mean, we do talk about
Speaker 1: containers for dead bodies a lot, an awful lot. I
Speaker 1: wonder why that happens. But anyway, some of you knew
Speaker 1: that word, and some of you knew it and you
Speaker 1: were able to say it immediately you thought about it,
Speaker 1: or maybe you thought about it for a split second
Speaker 1: and you just called it to mind. Sarcophagus. Okay. Some
Speaker 1: of you might not have been familiar with the word,
Speaker 1: had no idea what it was, or maybe you just
Speaker 1: didn't have any clue what we were getting at with it.
Speaker 1: You knew the word, but you didn't you didn't think
Speaker 1: we were heading in that direction. But then there's a
Speaker 1: third category of you out there. Some of you knew
Speaker 1: that you knew the word, but you couldn't deliver it
Speaker 1: on command. So you experienced this feeling of knowing, this
Speaker 1: feeling that you are just about to consummate the retrieval
Speaker 1: of that information from your memory. The word was it
Speaker 1: felt like it was right there, and you might have
Speaker 1: made a noise. You might have gone, uh, I know
Speaker 1: this and snapped your fingers like you had an itch
Speaker 1: you couldn't scratch. And this is referred to in the
Speaker 1: psychological literature as tip of the tongue phenomenon, when a
Speaker 1: word is on the tip of your tongue, the feeling
Speaker 1: of that tip of the tongue sensation is going to
Speaker 1: be the subject of today's episode. Yeah, And it's often
Speaker 1: abbreviated to t O t or taught. So yesterday I
Speaker 1: did a lot of reading about tots, about tots. We
Speaker 1: we will be talking about tots a good bit today.
Speaker 1: But if you were stuck looking for the word even
Speaker 1: momentarily if you you didn't call it to mind immediately,
Speaker 1: and you weren't just completely stumped and had no idea,
Speaker 1: but you were in that middle state where you knew
Speaker 1: you knew the word, but you couldn't bring it to mind.
Speaker 1: Stop for a second and reflect back on what that
Speaker 1: inner experience was like, sort of review the cognitive journey
Speaker 1: you traveled to try to find the right word. Before
Speaker 1: you had the word, what did you feel did you
Speaker 1: have a sense that you knew what letter the word
Speaker 1: started with? Did you feel like you might have known
Speaker 1: how many syllables the word had roughly? And once you
Speaker 1: heard the word, were you write about those things? And
Speaker 1: did you keep thinking of a similar word, something that
Speaker 1: sounds kind of like sarcophagus within going no, no, that's
Speaker 1: not the word. Here, we're going to do another one
Speaker 1: so you can have a chance to think about it again.
Speaker 1: This time we're going to do a proper name. And
Speaker 1: this I have to add, this is where I experience
Speaker 1: uh tip of the tongue phenomenon the most, almost almost exclusively,
Speaker 1: Like I really don't encounter the word based one any
Speaker 1: not much. But when it comes to the names of actors,
Speaker 1: this is like a weekly game I play in my head.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, And we should add that Robert and I
Speaker 1: played this game back and forth a little bit before
Speaker 1: we went on air, and I think I stumped him
Speaker 1: with this one. So what's the name of the actor
Speaker 1: who played Fredo in The Godfather? Answer? John Kaze Yeah,
Speaker 1: John Kazale. He was in The Godfather, Godfather Part two,
Speaker 1: Dog Day Afternoon, what else, the Deer Hunter. I think
Speaker 1: some of these, some of these big, these big Oscar
Speaker 1: winning movies of the seventies. He died young. He was
Speaker 1: a character actor, and he's one of those people who
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people who like movies, who
Speaker 1: appreciate especially you know, the critically acclaimed American cinema have
Speaker 1: encountered his name at some point. Yeah, you would know it.
Speaker 1: You would know that you had it back in the
Speaker 1: in the casks of your memory somewhere, but it's not
Speaker 1: easy to reach. Yeah, like we were discussing before we
Speaker 1: rolled here in this episode, Yeah, he he died young,
Speaker 1: but he was a character actor. If he's been a
Speaker 1: leading man and he died at his age, we'd have
Speaker 1: him on T shirts everywhere. But no, he was a
Speaker 1: character actor and as a character actor. You kind of
Speaker 1: have to have enough films under your belt, you have
Speaker 1: to like he needed like another decade before he would
Speaker 1: have reached the status of say of you Simi or
Speaker 1: you know, Ron Pearlman or any of these other character
Speaker 1: actors who have have reached the point where they're just
Speaker 1: such a part of our cinematic experience that we cannot
Speaker 1: forget them, right. And of course James Dean only had
Speaker 1: a few movies, but leading Man there, he'll be on
Speaker 1: t shirts, so there will be biopics about him. Here's
Speaker 1: the weird thing, just to throw in, like a personal
Speaker 1: one of mine. And this may not be in the
Speaker 1: case anymore because I keep talking about with Joe this week,
Speaker 1: but previously, Oliver Reid will come up a lot, like
Speaker 1: I'll try and remember who's that actor who played that role.
Speaker 1: Who's the guy who's the lead in the Devil's the
Speaker 1: guy who can't sing in Tommy? Yeah, it was he
Speaker 1: and Tommy. I don't know. I've never seen Tommy plays
Speaker 1: Bill Sikes in a movie adaptation of Oliver, you know
Speaker 1: that would that would make sense. He's been He's been
Speaker 1: in so many things because I think his last film
Speaker 1: was Gladiator, wonderful actor, did some great movies, did some
Speaker 1: horrible movies that are in their own way great, and
Speaker 1: and I've seen plenty of them. But for some reason,
Speaker 1: it'll come up, like I'll be watching Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 1: through thousand with some friends or just setting around thinking
Speaker 1: about movies, and I'll picture him in his bearded, masculine glory,
Speaker 1: and I'll try and remember his name, and it just
Speaker 1: doesn't form. And so it's just like the phantom limbs
Speaker 1: of my of my mind reaching out towards his face.
Speaker 1: But you've captured the essence of tip of the tongue here,
Speaker 1: because it's not just that you don't know. It's a
Speaker 1: combination of not knowing and having the sense that you
Speaker 1: really should know and you're just about to get it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the weird thing about this, and of course this
Speaker 1: is one of the challenges. We wanted to kick off
Speaker 1: this episode with an example, and when we wanted to
Speaker 1: throw out some examples, but it's it's very difficult, if
Speaker 1: not impossible, to find the perfect example of of a
Speaker 1: t O t or a taught because it's gonna vary
Speaker 1: depending on an individual's you know, personal mind map. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one thing scientists have found in studying this phenomenon is
Speaker 1: that it definitely happens more often with words we encounter
Speaker 1: less frequently, and depending on who you are, you might
Speaker 1: encounter some words more often than others. Robert and I
Speaker 1: probably would not be stumped by sarcophagus as sarcophag guy
Speaker 1: by sarcophagus the word because, like we said, we read
Speaker 1: and talk about containers for dead bodies a whole lot,
Speaker 1: but some people just probably don't talk about that all
Speaker 1: that much. So if that's a more a less often
Speaker 1: occurring word in your day to day language, you're probably
Speaker 1: more likely to be stumped by it, right, And the
Speaker 1: same is probably true for actors. Actors that you talk
Speaker 1: about all the time are really probably not going to
Speaker 1: give you a hard time. But the ones that you
Speaker 1: logged in your memory at some point in the past
Speaker 1: and have not come up since, those are the ones
Speaker 1: where it's really likely to hit you hard. Yeah, a lot,
Speaker 1: especially with you know, like that guy. Actors they're sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to as those character actors that have been in everything,
Speaker 1: but there there maybe not. They're not even in that
Speaker 1: Ron Pearlman, Steve the semi area. You know that they're
Speaker 1: the kind of actor who always plays a cop. You know,
Speaker 1: they always play a white cop in a film, and
Speaker 1: therefore they just kind of completely all blend together. Paul
Speaker 1: Marco and Conrad Brooks. Yeah, I guess see. I I
Speaker 1: have trouble picturing them, but I'm sure if you showed
Speaker 1: me their photos right now, I would say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there the cops in the Edwood movies. Oh yes, yes, okay. So,
Speaker 1: so we should look at what the scientists and psychologists
Speaker 1: of history have made of this tip of the tongue phenomenon,
Speaker 1: because it goes beyond just being like a weird curiosity
Speaker 1: of everyday memory. It it's sort of an interesting way
Speaker 1: to think about what happens when we try to interact
Speaker 1: with words and uh and and information retrieval in our brains.
Speaker 1: So William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, you might
Speaker 1: be familiar with him from the Varieties of Religious Experience,
Speaker 1: great text in the History of Study of Religions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's and he's definitely come up on the show before
Speaker 1: in the past. Was he the brother of Henry James,
Speaker 1: the writer? For some reason, I have that in my
Speaker 1: mind that could be completely wrong. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: if they if not, I like the idea of exploring
Speaker 1: it as like a red con buddy picture. You know.
Speaker 1: But so William James wrote about tip of the tongue phenomenon.
Speaker 1: As far as we know, he was one of the
Speaker 1: first people to really write about it. Robert, why don't
Speaker 1: you read William James quote about this? Al right? He?
Speaker 1: This is how he described it. He said, suppose we
Speaker 1: try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our
Speaker 1: consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein, but no
Speaker 1: mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active.
Speaker 1: A sort of wraith of the name is in it,
Speaker 1: beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments
Speaker 1: tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting
Speaker 1: us sink back without the longed for term. If wrong
Speaker 1: names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts
Speaker 1: immediately so as to negate them. They do not fit
Speaker 1: into its mold, and the gap of one word does
Speaker 1: not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content,
Speaker 1: as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps.
Speaker 1: I really like this way of picturing it, because he's
Speaker 1: he's casting the negative space there the gap between your
Speaker 1: knowledge that you know the word and the fact that
Speaker 1: you can't call up the word as as a thing,
Speaker 1: a literal thing, like the negative space is in its
Speaker 1: own right, uh, and entity acting in your mind because
Speaker 1: it negates the the other path when you know that
Speaker 1: it's not this other word. You know, right when you're
Speaker 1: looking for John Cazale, you know it's not Al Pacino
Speaker 1: you're looking for. You know it's not James con So
Speaker 1: the negative space there is doing something. It's just not
Speaker 1: leading you to John Kasale exactly. It's like there is
Speaker 1: a there is a silhouette, there is an outline, there
Speaker 1: is a shape there, and you know what, you know
Speaker 1: that certain things are not going to fit in that shape. Okay,
Speaker 1: speaking of that guy. Actors, how about this one. Who's
Speaker 1: the actor who played Nancy's dad in a Nightmare on
Speaker 1: Elm Street? Answer? Who's John Saxon? Of course, the great
Speaker 1: John Saxon. Now you submitted that question and answer, But
Speaker 1: do you think it would have stumped you? If you hadn't,
Speaker 1: it would not have stumped me. Um, this was very
Speaker 1: much one Unlike Oliver read, I know John Saxson when
Speaker 1: I see him, and like the John Saxson. I guess
Speaker 1: it's just more of a singular name. It sticks out more,
Speaker 1: whereas Oliver read even though Oliver Reid was very much
Speaker 1: one of a kind, he name is a little Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a little British e. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: John Saxon to me, I think i'd know him better
Speaker 1: from Enter the Dragon, where he plays the most boring
Speaker 1: of all the fighters. He does play the most boring
Speaker 1: about the fighter thing. He doesn't even really fight all
Speaker 1: that hard. It just kind of happens to be in
Speaker 1: the right place at the right time, doesn't it. John
Speaker 1: Saxon in a nutshell? Okay, So back to William James.
Speaker 1: So we said William James was the first person to
Speaker 1: really describe the sensation that we know about, but he
Speaker 1: didn't call it tip of the tongue phenomenon. The name,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, just comes from regular language, right,
Speaker 1: that's colloquial usage. Yeah, it's It's apparently a universal thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: In particular, we were looking at the nineteen and ninety
Speaker 1: nine paper Sparkling at the End of the Tongue, the
Speaker 1: ideology of tip of the tongue phenomenology, and what they
Speaker 1: did is they surveyed fifty one language and they found
Speaker 1: that forty five of them. So it's about expressed the
Speaker 1: feeling of temporary inaccessibility with the same tongue metaphor here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you might see this in terms of having
Speaker 1: the word on your tongue or at the back of
Speaker 1: your tongue or in the mouth or in the throat
Speaker 1: or something. Uh. The one that's in the title of
Speaker 1: that paper, sparkling at the end of the tongue is
Speaker 1: I should say, it's worth noting that that expression comes
Speaker 1: from Korean and that's just pure wildfire. It's so good,
Speaker 1: sparkling at the end of the tongue. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: kind of draws back to that that the description from
Speaker 1: James that it's wraith like, you know, this is supernatural
Speaker 1: energy to it. Interestingly, enough, of the the languages surveyed here,
Speaker 1: American Sign language, Icelandic to sub Saharan African languages, and
Speaker 1: Indonesian do not use the tongue metaphor. Now, Additionally, five languages, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hindijasa,
Speaker 1: and Ebo use the related expression in the mouth to
Speaker 1: describe the experience. The Japanese use the expression out of
Speaker 1: the throat and uh. And some use multiple metaphors, so
Speaker 1: you have the tongue, but then you have another one
Speaker 1: in use as well, with the French being in my opinion,
Speaker 1: the most exciting because they use both the tip of
Speaker 1: the tongue and hole in my head. Yeah, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's like I almost have it, but there's a
Speaker 1: hole in my head. And it's I guess the thought
Speaker 1: like flew out that the word just flew out of
Speaker 1: my head and I cannot grasp it. Oh, that adds
Speaker 1: a whole new meaning to I need to think of
Speaker 1: John Kazale like I need a hole in my head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's interesting. Uh And certainly one of those
Speaker 1: where you you know, you start thinking of languages is
Speaker 1: kind of like little ecosystems of symbolism and metaphor and
Speaker 1: if you uh and and and some of those ideas
Speaker 1: are universal, some of them are confined to a number
Speaker 1: of ecosystems, and some seem to be just perfectly encapsulated
Speaker 1: within that particular language. Yeah, totally. So we're gonna come
Speaker 1: back to that paper in a minute, but I do
Speaker 1: want to go back and mention that there's sort of
Speaker 1: a landmark paper in the study of tip of the
Speaker 1: tongue phenomenon that came in nineteen sixty six by Roger
Speaker 1: Brown and David McNeil, and this was just called the
Speaker 1: Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. And these guys made some
Speaker 1: of the first systematic observations of what happens during a
Speaker 1: tip of the tongue state in an experimental setting. They
Speaker 1: define tip of the tongue is a failure to recall
Speaker 1: a word of which one has knowledge, again bringing these
Speaker 1: distinctions of sort of stages of knowledge into things. So
Speaker 1: what does it mean when you think you remember something
Speaker 1: but you can't bring it to mind. And one of
Speaker 1: the things they point out at the outside of their
Speaker 1: paper is that it's interesting, like, if you can't recall
Speaker 1: the word, how do we know that the person experiencing
Speaker 1: a tip of the tongue state a tot if you will,
Speaker 1: actually has knowledge of the word. What if it's just
Speaker 1: an illusion that you actually have knowledge of the word.
Speaker 1: And they think that's not the case, because you can
Speaker 1: observe a couple of things. One of the things is
Speaker 1: that sometimes people resolve the tip of the tongue state
Speaker 1: by themselves. So you might sit there for a minute
Speaker 1: going like, oh, oh, oh, I know it, I know it,
Speaker 1: and then figure it out and then so that sort
Speaker 1: of proves that you did actually have it. It's not
Speaker 1: just a phenomenal illusion that you would have access to
Speaker 1: the word. And then there are other cases where the
Speaker 1: purpose where the person, even if they don't resolve the
Speaker 1: state by themselves, they can recognize the word once it's
Speaker 1: presented from the outside, and they can negate other words.
Speaker 1: So even if you couldn't come up with John Kazale,
Speaker 1: you could say no, not that actor, not that actor. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: You could say no to all the other names in
Speaker 1: the world. Someone says John Cassavetti's and you you instantly
Speaker 1: no is no, it's not John Cassavetti's. But that might
Speaker 1: be enough to say, oh, it's John Kazale, right. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the other things that's really interesting and
Speaker 1: study of the tip of the tongue phenomenon is that
Speaker 1: certain clues related to the sound of the word can
Speaker 1: trigger it. They can send you down the right path.
Speaker 1: But I like this description they give what the tip
Speaker 1: of the tongue state is, like they say, the signs
Speaker 1: of it were unmistakable. He would appear to be in
Speaker 1: mild torment, something like the brink of a sneeze, and
Speaker 1: if he found the word, his relief was considerable. I
Speaker 1: think we've we've all found ourselves in a situation. I
Speaker 1: don't know I'm speaking for everybody here, but speak for myself.
Speaker 1: I have certainly found myself in a situation where a
Speaker 1: a tot is induced in my own mind, and in
Speaker 1: a conversation with several people. Everyone else moves on to
Speaker 1: something a little more and more just, and I'm still
Speaker 1: in that tot, and so everything's just going on around me.
Speaker 1: And then I resolved the tot, and then I disturbed
Speaker 1: the conversation again by saying I was don knots don
Speaker 1: Knots played Barney five or whatever the top mind and
Speaker 1: nobody else knows what you're talking about. Everybody else has
Speaker 1: totally forgotten this what what has actually been just a
Speaker 1: situation of mental anguish for me for you know, a
Speaker 1: few seconds anyway. Yeah, Okay, so I think we've we
Speaker 1: we sort of described the phenomenon. Now. It's it's these
Speaker 1: two main features inability to recall a word or phrase,
Speaker 1: and then the subjective sensation that recall is imminent, it's inbound,
Speaker 1: You're just about to have it. But one of the
Speaker 1: really interesting things about this subject is thinking about what
Speaker 1: broader implications this has for how we understand language working
Speaker 1: in the brain, Like, how does the retrieval of a
Speaker 1: word happen when you're putting together the language you speak?
Speaker 1: Just consider this for a second. Usually speaking happens so
Speaker 1: fast you don't have time to analyze it. When you
Speaker 1: go to speak a sentence, where do your words come from?
Speaker 1: One of the creepiest things is how little awareness we
Speaker 1: really seem to have of how language comes out of us.
Speaker 1: So I start speaking a sentence, and the sentence happens,
Speaker 1: but I don't really know how it happened. I'm not
Speaker 1: consciously aware of choosing each and every one of the
Speaker 1: words I use from some kind of dictionary in my
Speaker 1: brain as I go along. Uh, it just sort of
Speaker 1: happens and then it's out, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: happened in between. But it's only really in that tip
Speaker 1: of the tongue state. By contrast, that the mystery of
Speaker 1: the regular fluidity of language becomes so clear and so
Speaker 1: starkly weird. And it is weird, isn't it, Like I
Speaker 1: I can't help but think now about the difference between
Speaker 1: um my, my, my spoken use of language and my
Speaker 1: written use of language, and not just in the fact,
Speaker 1: and you know, the obvious fact that with written language
Speaker 1: one has the opportunity to revise and uh and shift
Speaker 1: things around and tweak it until you get in an
Speaker 1: exact form you want. But just my, you know, by
Speaker 1: the moment, my real time use of language, I feel
Speaker 1: is rather different in both the spoken in the written form. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's totally true. And in fact, I think
Speaker 1: I have more of the sensation of consciously dealing with
Speaker 1: something like a mental dictionary when I'm writing than when
Speaker 1: I'm talking. When i'm talking, it feels much more mysterious
Speaker 1: and obscure to me where the words come from. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: when I'm writing, there's like a little guy in my
Speaker 1: head and he's going into a little library and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we'll have this word and this
Speaker 1: word and this word, these are the ones we're going
Speaker 1: to use, Whereas when I'm speaking, it's more like a
Speaker 1: scene from a like a submarine movie. But like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get the torpedoes in there. We've got to go.
Speaker 1: We've got to go. He has to somehow express what
Speaker 1: he wants on his sandwich. Is that the right word?
Speaker 1: I don't care. Get it out there, because these sandwiches
Speaker 1: have to happen and the sentences out before you even
Speaker 1: know what happened. And then you may have had some
Speaker 1: Freudian slips. You mentioned weird body organs that you didn't
Speaker 1: mean to why why, I don't know the Freudian slip,
Speaker 1: and another area worthy of consideration, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like we really should come up with our own proprietary
Speaker 1: expression for tip of the tongue, states. I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what it should be. Maybe we'll think about it
Speaker 1: by the end of the episode. But I do want
Speaker 1: to mention that in there was a paper we looked
Speaker 1: at that that had It was called a Review of
Speaker 1: the Tip of the Tongue Experience in Psychological Bulletin by
Speaker 1: Alan sp Around, And this is just a helpful way
Speaker 1: to quickly summarize some quick findings since that nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six paper that are on the table about what what's
Speaker 1: the deal with tip of the tongue? Well, what does
Speaker 1: science found out. They found that one, it's a nearly
Speaker 1: universal experience. Pretty much everybody experiences it. Number two. On average,
Speaker 1: it occurs about once a week for people. I feel
Speaker 1: like that sounds kind of low. It does we when
Speaker 1: we just triggered it, like at least half a dozen
Speaker 1: times for each of us in It may be unusual
Speaker 1: in US because we spend way more time talking about
Speaker 1: movies that are full of barely recognizable actors that we
Speaker 1: feel like lots of forgettable names. Yeah. Um, the number
Speaker 1: three they say it increases with age. The number four,
Speaker 1: it's frequently elicited by proper names. It's so probably more
Speaker 1: often than dictionary words. It's you're going to be searching
Speaker 1: for who was that actor, who was that famous person?
Speaker 1: Because these were these names are not necessarily part of
Speaker 1: your vocabulary and your Yeah, and it's it's I feel
Speaker 1: like it's going to be more memorable than your attempting
Speaker 1: use a word or recognize a word that exists kind
Speaker 1: of outside of your standard palette. Yeah. So, fifth observation
Speaker 1: is it often enables access to the target words. First letter.
Speaker 1: There's a really common experience. You you're in a tip
Speaker 1: of the tongue state. You can't remember the word, but
Speaker 1: you can remember what it starts with. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: don't remember what those really weird pyramid things are that
Speaker 1: they had in the ancient world, but they began with
Speaker 1: a Z. What were they? What was it? And then
Speaker 1: you remember zigguratt, Yeah, ziggy star dust, Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: the too, Okay. Six These the tip of the tongue
Speaker 1: states are often accompanied by words related to the target. Again,
Speaker 1: you can come up with ziggy star dust, but not
Speaker 1: ziggaratte right, Or if it's you're trying to remember that characters,
Speaker 1: that character actor's name, you'll remember every film he was
Speaker 1: in and maybe some of the characters that he played. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the final thing is uh. The tip of
Speaker 1: the tongue states are resolved during the experience about half
Speaker 1: of the time, so it's it's only about half of
Speaker 1: the time that it's just unresolved anguish. You just end
Speaker 1: in torture that fades out and you get washed away
Speaker 1: into the sea of experience and never find an end
Speaker 1: to your problem. Now as well discussed though our age
Speaker 1: of of smartphones and just almost you know, constant internet connection.
Speaker 1: I feel it has has has changed the scenario used
Speaker 1: to if you couldn't think of of the of the
Speaker 1: name of of an actor, like you just had to
Speaker 1: maybe go home and look through your old film magazines
Speaker 1: or ask around until somebody identified Fredo for you. But
Speaker 1: now you're just a click away. So it just comes
Speaker 1: down to, like how long am I willing to suffer
Speaker 1: I find myself in this very scenario. Like sometimes there's
Speaker 1: a sense of pride, like I'm gonna remember this on
Speaker 1: my own. I'm not going to go to the smartphone
Speaker 1: because I should know who this actor is. It's much
Speaker 1: more satisfying to do it without cheating, right and then,
Speaker 1: But then other times you might be like, screw it.
Speaker 1: I need I need to know. I don't care if
Speaker 1: I'm driving a car. I need to know who played
Speaker 1: the High Priest and beast Master. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: See here's one where I'm not having tip of the tongue.
Speaker 1: I just I have no clue. He had a very
Speaker 1: uh try to trying to He had his very pronounced nose,
Speaker 1: very hawk like nose in that film, and not David Warner.
Speaker 1: He was in the sequel or maybe the third one ripped. Okay, No,
Speaker 1: I I just had no idea he really didn't know
Speaker 1: one tip of the tongue. I completely outside my memory experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well, you know, shame on you for not
Speaker 1: for not remembering the priest. But let's understandable. Okay, quick question.
Speaker 1: This is a toy musical instrument that produces a buzzing
Speaker 1: tone when a person hums into the mouth hole. Answer kazoo, kazoo.
Speaker 1: No that one. I think that would have stumped to
Speaker 1: me a little bit, Not that I don't know the
Speaker 1: word kazoo, but i'd be I'd be like, wait, what
Speaker 1: what what a toy? I'd be thinking of something else. Anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: here I got another one for you. So what's the
Speaker 1: word for a chemical having a p H greater than seven.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite of the word acidic, a synonym of
Speaker 1: the word basic. You probably encountered this sometime in school.
Speaker 1: The word is alkaline. Base is an alkaline. And this one,
Speaker 1: this one threw me for a curve the other day.
Speaker 1: But though I'm not completely sure of it was a
Speaker 1: full on tot because I think I was trying to
Speaker 1: remember the wrong word. Oh yeah, what was the word?
Speaker 1: I can't remember? Because now all I can remember his
Speaker 1: his alkaline. Okay, well we should look at these explanatory theories.
Speaker 1: What's going on when you're having a TOT in your brain?
Speaker 1: And here a big help is one of the papers
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, that papers Sparkling at the End of
Speaker 1: the Tongue the ideology of the tip of the tongue
Speaker 1: phenomenology horrible name, but very clear laying out of a
Speaker 1: bunch of the different theories have been put forward over
Speaker 1: the years in explaining how tip of the tongue states
Speaker 1: could be coming about. And there all the explanatory theories
Speaker 1: are are mostly grouped under two different umbrella terms. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right, So we basically have direct access views and
Speaker 1: inferential views. Okay, we'll start with direct access views. This
Speaker 1: as an overall. Direct access views argue that tots arise
Speaker 1: from sensitivity to the unretrieved targets. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the memory item in question isn't strong enough for you
Speaker 1: to recall it, but there's still strong enough to signal
Speaker 1: a TOT. So I like to think of this in
Speaker 1: terms of a murder has taken place because there's a
Speaker 1: mystery here, right, there's a problem to be solved, and
Speaker 1: this is like the witness saying, look, Officer, I glimpsed
Speaker 1: the murderer and the shadows, but I couldn't quite make
Speaker 1: them out. I can almost name a suspect. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this one. I'm gonna have a little metaphor here.
Speaker 1: We'll see how it works out. But if I understand
Speaker 1: this view correctly, I think these are the types of
Speaker 1: explanations where it's like you have the starting point and
Speaker 1: you have the ending point, but you're just failing to
Speaker 1: make a connection between them, As opposed to this other
Speaker 1: type of view. We're going to talk about the wrenchial view,
Speaker 1: and now what's the deal with that. Inferential views claim
Speaker 1: that tots are not based directly on an inaccessible but
Speaker 1: activated targets. In other words, tots arise from clues. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this would be like the detective saying I didn't
Speaker 1: see the murderer. I wasn't there, but based on the evidence,
Speaker 1: I can almost name a suspect. Okay. So in my
Speaker 1: other analogy, if the first one was I have the
Speaker 1: start point, to have the endpoint, and I just can't
Speaker 1: quite connect them, this would be more like I have
Speaker 1: the start point and I think I can find my
Speaker 1: way to an ending point. Yeah, Like, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you were faced with the John Cassale situation,
Speaker 1: my understanding of this would be like, maybe I don't
Speaker 1: actually remember John Cassale's name, but I've seen enough of
Speaker 1: his pictures I can and I and I know his face,
Speaker 1: and I know his roles. I should be able to
Speaker 1: like I have Surely, surely I am the type of
Speaker 1: person who knows John Casale's name. Yeah, I can put
Speaker 1: it together. And in this case, I think, Uh, the
Speaker 1: feeling of knowing the word that you experience is uh,
Speaker 1: it's not based on the word being activated in memory,
Speaker 1: but your brains subconsciously judging that it has enough information
Speaker 1: to circuitously figure out the word. If you'll, if you'll
Speaker 1: just give me a moment, if you know, you just
Speaker 1: have a second. Um, So it's not the presence of
Speaker 1: the word itself that's exciting you, but it's your unconscious
Speaker 1: confidence in your own lexical detective powers to pick up
Speaker 1: on your detective metaphor. Indeed, alright, so at this point,
Speaker 1: let's break them out a little a little further here. Okay,
Speaker 1: So under these direct access views, we've got a few different, uh,
Speaker 1: different ones explained in this paper yeah. Basically, they center
Speaker 1: on three three sub hypotheses. There's the blocking hypothesis. Blocking
Speaker 1: hypothesis says that toughts occur when a retrieval cue prompts
Speaker 1: retrieval of an incorrect but closely related word and we
Speaker 1: realize it's incorrect, thus the blank. So it's like you're
Speaker 1: trying to remember John Casale's name, you remember somebody else's name,
Speaker 1: You're like, no, that's not it. The blank makes itself known.
Speaker 1: It's like if your Google Maps is constantly telling you
Speaker 1: over and over to go to the wrong destination. You
Speaker 1: keep going there, but you every time you recognize it's wrong,
Speaker 1: so you just back up and start over, so you
Speaker 1: never go anywhere. It's kind of like I like, I
Speaker 1: basically said this sentence before it with different words. But
Speaker 1: it's if I'm trying to remember Oliver Read and I say,
Speaker 1: I want to say Rex Harrison, but I know that's wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, like I, I I know the thing that's coming
Speaker 1: to mind is definitely not it. Yeah, but I can't
Speaker 1: remember Oliver Read's name. You have a path blaze through
Speaker 1: the woods of your memory that's taking you to the
Speaker 1: wrong destination, but it's just too well forged. You can't
Speaker 1: stop following it, all right. The next one is the
Speaker 1: incomplete activation hypothesis. This holds that taught's happen when we
Speaker 1: can't recall the target word, but since its presence nonetheless. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this sounds just like the basic failure hypothesis, the
Speaker 1: failure to connect. You really do have the word in memory,
Speaker 1: but you just can't quite get there for some reason,
Speaker 1: some some strength of connection does not exist. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: you're you're you're a little tired, you're worn out. Everything
Speaker 1: is not really firing at maximum speed, and you just
Speaker 1: can't reach it. Okay, what's the next one? Transmission deficit model. Okay,
Speaker 1: this says that tots arise from a multi component memory representation.
Speaker 1: You retrieve the image, the semantic meaning of the thing,
Speaker 1: but not the word. So maybe the sound, even the smell,
Speaker 1: but not the word. Oh you mean, like the semantics
Speaker 1: associated with the concept of the word. But what you're
Speaker 1: searching for is the sound of the word, and you
Speaker 1: can't do that exactly. So those are the three main
Speaker 1: direct access views. Okay, those are those are the I
Speaker 1: saw I saw the killer in the shadows, but now
Speaker 1: I can't exactly remember his face, right, But what's the
Speaker 1: what are the detective views the inferential views? All right?
Speaker 1: There are two main ones here. The first one is
Speaker 1: Q familiarity theory. This holds that tots are based on
Speaker 1: an assessment of the level of recognition of a particular
Speaker 1: cue or uestion. What does that mean? You don't have
Speaker 1: to actually have the memory items stored away. But and
Speaker 1: this is my read on this one, is that you
Speaker 1: feel like you should know it. So this is more
Speaker 1: directly related to what I said earlier about inferential views,
Speaker 1: like I feel like I'm the type of person who
Speaker 1: should know that, and I believe that strongly enough that
Speaker 1: I'm straining to remember it. Okay, But it seems like,
Speaker 1: just from my uh naive viewpoint, maybe it seems like
Speaker 1: that one would have a harder time explaining those cases
Speaker 1: where you have a taught you feel like you're about
Speaker 1: to remember something, and then you do remember it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like this was harder for me to like, it's
Speaker 1: harder for me to to read this one and then
Speaker 1: think back and try and feel like I and recognize
Speaker 1: it in my own experience. I feel like the best
Speaker 1: I can come up with is maybe like trying to
Speaker 1: remember state capitals of states that I don't think about anymore,
Speaker 1: because there's definitely a point in everybody's history where had
Speaker 1: to memorize all the states and their capitals, or various
Speaker 1: other things like memorizing the pre to table, or memorizing,
Speaker 1: you know, all the nations of Africa, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So kind of thing you end up not carrying around
Speaker 1: with it, but at some point you knew it, and
Speaker 1: you know that you knew it, even if you don't
Speaker 1: actually remember it anymore. Oh, but maybe you're thinking you
Speaker 1: can piece it together from other pieces of information in
Speaker 1: your brain that are more readily accessible, Like maybe you
Speaker 1: can remember the state capitals if you can picture a
Speaker 1: map in your head. Yeah, or think of the sports
Speaker 1: teams that are associated with it. I don't know, Okay,
Speaker 1: that that makes more sense. And then there's one more
Speaker 1: explanation under the inferential umbrella, right, Yes. Accessibility heuristic tots
Speaker 1: are based on the amount and intensity of partial information
Speaker 1: that remembers retrieve when they cannot recall a target answer.
Speaker 1: So I remember everything but her name. I should be
Speaker 1: able to remember her name. That's that's my I read
Speaker 1: on this. So you the difference between a tot and
Speaker 1: just not knowing something is? Is how much other stuff
Speaker 1: peripheral to this word you remember? Especially if it's really intent.
Speaker 1: It's like I can remember what her hair smells like.
Speaker 1: I don't, or I can remember, you know, staring into
Speaker 1: his nostril holes and seeing the hairs there. Why can't
Speaker 1: I remember his name? Why is this so intense and
Speaker 1: yet the name eludes me? I should know this person.
Speaker 1: I was trapped in a cave with them for three weeks.
Speaker 1: We had to do unspeakable things to survive. Why can't
Speaker 1: I remember his first name? That sort of thing? Now,
Speaker 1: the reason you couldn't remember his first name is because
Speaker 1: you know what he did, do you? He he made
Speaker 1: a burr hole in your skull, spose a small part
Speaker 1: of your brain. But what's the word for that process
Speaker 1: when you drill a little hole in somebody's skull. Well,
Speaker 1: your answer, of course, it is prepanation in or trepanning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or if you're a modern neurosurgeon, you might call it
Speaker 1: craniotomy smarty pants, But we're we're referring to the stone
Speaker 1: Age practice personally here. That's a good one because it's
Speaker 1: a word that I bet a lot of people have
Speaker 1: heard at some point, but you don't use it all
Speaker 1: that often unless you're us. Yeah, yeah, it's come up
Speaker 1: without quite a bit here, but and it certainly our
Speaker 1: listeners may have it stored away as well, but otherwise
Speaker 1: it didn't come up in the real world too often. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned, there are a bunch of different theories
Speaker 1: that have been proposed over the years as to how
Speaker 1: you might explain different versions of the tip of the
Speaker 1: tongue state. But the real question, of course, I know
Speaker 1: people people want the answer to is how do you
Speaker 1: overcome it? Or maybe just how do you avoid making
Speaker 1: it worse? Because it truly can't feel like agony. It's
Speaker 1: a petty agony, but it's agony nonetheless. Okay, never fear.
Speaker 1: We do actually have some news for you on on
Speaker 1: how to affect your tip of the tongue recurrent states,
Speaker 1: but it might not all be good news. Uh So,
Speaker 1: so let's start with some particularly bad news. Robert, did
Speaker 1: you know that the more time you spend in the
Speaker 1: tip of the tongue state, the less likely you are
Speaker 1: to remember the word the next time. This is crazy
Speaker 1: because it makes because it's easy to all into that
Speaker 1: thinking where I don't want to grab my smartphone. I
Speaker 1: want to think of think of this up myself, even
Speaker 1: if it takes me, you know, the better part of
Speaker 1: an hour. I'm going to reach it myself. It feels
Speaker 1: like that should strengthen the muscle, right, Well, I mean
Speaker 1: there might be something to that, as we're going to
Speaker 1: see from a study in in just a second. But
Speaker 1: how many times does that process lead to correct resolution
Speaker 1: of the tip of the tongue of state? A lot
Speaker 1: of times you just failed, don't you? Well, I don't fail,
Speaker 1: you end up cheating. Well, that's the thing. I either
Speaker 1: end up cheating eventually. But I feel like if I
Speaker 1: apply my mind to it long enough, I get there
Speaker 1: with actors names, because that's my sickness. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't think of a single situation where I've said, well,
Speaker 1: I just can't think of who played who was Danny's
Speaker 1: mom in Kubrick's The Shining Oh was she also Olive Oil?
Speaker 1: And the Robert Altman Popeye movie? Yes? She was great?
Speaker 1: But yeah, Okay, So there's a study from two eight
Speaker 1: by scientists Amy Beth Warrener and Karen are Humphreys called
Speaker 1: learning to fail reoccurring tip of the tongue states you
Speaker 1: can already tell from the title that this is going
Speaker 1: to bring some bad news for people who have this
Speaker 1: petti agony of the tip of the tongue of journey. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the hypothesis going into this experiment was that if you
Speaker 1: make an error once, you're more likely to make it
Speaker 1: again by way of what they call a quote implicit
Speaker 1: learning mechanism. The more you fail, you the better you
Speaker 1: forge that path to failure. If you go with the
Speaker 1: metaphor we had earlier about blazing a trail through the woods,
Speaker 1: every time you walk down the wrong path to the
Speaker 1: wrong destination, that path just gets better and better to find.
Speaker 1: You crear more brush out of the way, you make footprints,
Speaker 1: you you trample down, and and it just becomes easier
Speaker 1: and easier to find find your way to failure every time.
Speaker 1: So how did this study work? They played a definition
Speaker 1: game kind of like the one we've been playing, where
Speaker 1: they read you a definition of a of a low
Speaker 1: frequency word, what's the word? And when a subject entered
Speaker 1: a t ot state, they were randomly given a delay
Speaker 1: of either ten seconds or thirty seconds to recall the word,
Speaker 1: and then after the delay period the experiment or would
Speaker 1: give them the words. So if you're looking for sarcophagus,
Speaker 1: you can't get it for either ten seconds or thirty
Speaker 1: seconds at random. They then give you the words sarcophagus.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. And two days later, the participants came back
Speaker 1: to the lab to be tested again on the same words,
Speaker 1: and some participants got stuck on the same words they'd
Speaker 1: been stuck on just two days before. And strangely, the
Speaker 1: results of the test showed that tip of the tongue
Speaker 1: states were twice as likely to happen on words where
Speaker 1: the subject spent thirty seconds in the tip of the
Speaker 1: tongue state then in words where they spent ten cons
Speaker 1: in the tip of the tongue state. So the longer
Speaker 1: you spent in that state of saying I know this,
Speaker 1: I know this, but not being able to call it up,
Speaker 1: the worse you got at remembering the word in the future.
Speaker 1: And in the words of the author's quote, we argue
Speaker 1: that this longer delay in t ot state amounts to
Speaker 1: a greater implicit learning of the erroneous state. You're just
Speaker 1: practicing how to get worse And I, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the interesting questions I was thinking about was
Speaker 1: what to do with this information in a general sense,
Speaker 1: because I do certainly believe that you can practice yourself
Speaker 1: to get worse at something. I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people have a kind of, um, very broadly practiced, positive mindset.
Speaker 1: I know I encountered this in writing workshops, where it
Speaker 1: was just sort of the idea that there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as bad practice. The more you write, the better
Speaker 1: you're going to get. And I do generally, of course,
Speaker 1: think practice makes people better at almost any craft or skill,
Speaker 1: but not all practice is good. I I am personally
Speaker 1: of the opinion that you can right yourself into a
Speaker 1: rut that makes you a worse writer the more you
Speaker 1: do it well. One one way that I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this earlier is in terms of of doing yoga. Um,
Speaker 1: that's something I can relate to since I practice yoga.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you can practice yoga every day, you can
Speaker 1: go to a yoga class every day. But if you're
Speaker 1: being instructed to do a pose in a way that
Speaker 1: is incorrect or is in some way like long term
Speaker 1: detrimental to you, like you know, something where you're putting
Speaker 1: too much pressure on your knee or you're bracing yourself
Speaker 1: against your knee in a weird way. Um, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can practice something the wrong way and and ultimately make
Speaker 1: things worse. Yeah, in a way that you're you're not
Speaker 1: just being unproductive, but you're literally backtracking your Your things
Speaker 1: are getting worse for you. I agree. And so there's
Speaker 1: a follow up to this though, that does have an
Speaker 1: interesting tip we can take away. One of the authors
Speaker 1: of this original study, Karen Humphreys, co authored another study
Speaker 1: that came out just last year in with Maria C. D'Angelo,
Speaker 1: and it was called Tip of the Tongue. States reoccur
Speaker 1: because of implicit learning, but resolving them helps. So they're
Speaker 1: building on this previous research that said that speakers tend
Speaker 1: to exhibit taught states for the same words over and over.
Speaker 1: And they played this same game again, the definition game.
Speaker 1: I'll read you a definition, you give me the low
Speaker 1: frequency word, And they actually carried out six different experiments
Speaker 1: in the study. They found a range of things, one
Speaker 1: of them that they just replicated earlier findings about the
Speaker 1: error state making things worse. What we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: you can practice how to fail and get better at failing. Um,
Speaker 1: you sit there in the taught state and you're just
Speaker 1: getting worse and worse at remembering the word. But they
Speaker 1: also found that subjects could decrease their likelihood of experiencing
Speaker 1: this taught state on a single word in the future
Speaker 1: if they were able to resolve taught state on their own,
Speaker 1: as opposed to not resolving it or having the words
Speaker 1: supplied by a third party. So, right, so if you
Speaker 1: can figure out a way to to find that word
Speaker 1: from from your own mind without cheating, you are less
Speaker 1: likely to have the taught state for that word in
Speaker 1: the future. But then again, I mean, that's kind of
Speaker 1: not very helpful advice, is it, Like, just be told
Speaker 1: you must solve this problem in order to not continue
Speaker 1: having this problem. It certainly makes tots uh when you
Speaker 1: experience them, feel more like a ticking time bomb, right right,
Speaker 1: But it it sounds though like the the ideal situation
Speaker 1: here is you need to make sure that you and
Speaker 1: your your immediate circle of you know, family or friends
Speaker 1: are in a position to where you're they're going to
Speaker 1: help you get it yourself exactly, because fortunately they did
Speaker 1: find that this works. They figured out this way that
Speaker 1: the experiment or can help without negating the corrective effect
Speaker 1: of self resolution. So you just give hints that that's
Speaker 1: the way to resolve the taught state. If the experiment
Speaker 1: or gives what they called orthographic cues, so basically cues
Speaker 1: related to like the spelling of the word, this would
Speaker 1: allow people to correct the bad retrieval pathway themselves, and
Speaker 1: the authors conclude quote, these findings reinforce the notion that
Speaker 1: the language production system is dynamic and continually learning from experience,
Speaker 1: even when that experience is error full. Okay, well let
Speaker 1: me try one out on everybody to to to experiment
Speaker 1: with this. Who played the secretary in Ghostbusters? All right?
Speaker 1: Can you think of it? If you can't, let's not
Speaker 1: just give away the answer. What are some hints? All right?
Speaker 1: What word? Let her? Does it start with? First name?
Speaker 1: Begins with A last name, begins with P last name
Speaker 1: sounds like something you might boil water in answer? Any potts? Oh,
Speaker 1: there you go. So hopefully that was less damaging to
Speaker 1: your brain because we we we supplied a few hints
Speaker 1: along the way so that you could still get it yourself,
Speaker 1: unless we got there before you were you were able
Speaker 1: to say it yourself, in which case, I'm sorry we
Speaker 1: condemned you to possible future taughts with anything, we should
Speaker 1: have asked you to posit, but then again, we didn't
Speaker 1: want you to spend too long on a data Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it may seem like there's essentially an ascending order
Speaker 1: of preference if you want to avoid future taught states.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like the worst case is probably just
Speaker 1: sitting in the taught state and never resolving it. You
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. Better, but still not great
Speaker 1: is looking up the answer, better but still not The
Speaker 1: best is looking up the answer very quickly, as quickly
Speaker 1: as you can, so you spend as little time as
Speaker 1: possible in that taught state. But if you're on your own,
Speaker 1: you know, unless you want to call a friend, that's
Speaker 1: the best thing to do, right, And then, so the
Speaker 1: best option seems like, uh, figuring out the name for yourself,
Speaker 1: and if necessary, getting hints from people around you that
Speaker 1: have to do with like what letter it starts with
Speaker 1: or what it sounds like. This would be something worthwhile
Speaker 1: in future versions of Siri. Right, so that series not
Speaker 1: just answering your question, but series providing you a hint
Speaker 1: so that you can get it yourself quickly. Interesting, or
Speaker 1: maybe that would just be about being able to ask
Speaker 1: a specific question like Sirie, what is the first letter
Speaker 1: in the first name of the secretary? And Ghostbusters? Oh, man,
Speaker 1: if I would I shell out for an unlocked iPhone?
Speaker 1: If I could just get Sirie to do that? Maybe maybe? Now,
Speaker 1: are there any other any other clear answers on ways
Speaker 1: to avoid taught states? I don't know if we found
Speaker 1: any other clear ones. There are some confused ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the coffee thing is confusing. Um like maybe drink
Speaker 1: coffee or maybe not. It depends on where you look. Uh.
Speaker 1: Where we were looking at two thousand fourteen paper caffeine
Speaker 1: priming in the tip of the tongue evidence for plasticity
Speaker 1: in the phonological system, and I found that caffeine can
Speaker 1: both increase and decrease the number of tots depending on
Speaker 1: the experiment. This study found that caffeine might hinder your
Speaker 1: short term recall of certain words, while past studies have
Speaker 1: have illustrated the caffeine can perhaps help prevent tots. So
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't use tots here because everybody wants to
Speaker 1: increase their number of tots. We we should say to
Speaker 1: the tongue states, Yeah, well, you know, I like tots.
Speaker 1: It goes back to childhood, when you're in the lunch
Speaker 1: line at school, who doesn't wish you had more tots?
Speaker 1: They only give you like seven, it's horrible. Well, the
Speaker 1: thing is, now I am going to discuss them as tots.
Speaker 1: So when I'm trying to think of someone's name, now
Speaker 1: among you know what, I'm hanging out with people, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start saying I'm having a tot. Here, I'm having
Speaker 1: a tot, and I can have no clue what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. Right. Another way to involve drugs, if you
Speaker 1: might want to avoid tots in a in a cheating
Speaker 1: roundabout way, UH is taking something like LaRaza pam. But
Speaker 1: now we're not advising you take Larazo pam recreationally or
Speaker 1: even to improve performance, because it doesn't actually improve performance.
Speaker 1: It's not going to help you avoid tots in that
Speaker 1: what it will help you claim the word earlier. It
Speaker 1: may help you avoid tots in that you'll be wrong
Speaker 1: and you won't care. You're not going to experience that.
Speaker 1: This is what they found is that when people are
Speaker 1: on this drug and they get the word wrong, they
Speaker 1: don't have this sense of I know it, it's imminent.
Speaker 1: They just say whatever retrieves. But just say uh. Rex
Speaker 1: Harrison played The Secretary and Ghostbusters, and they never all, Right,
Speaker 1: what's have another one? Joe? What do you got? Okay?
Speaker 1: How about this one? What's the time and date? Happens
Speaker 1: twice each year where the sun crosses over the celestial equator,
Speaker 1: where the night and the day are the same length?
Speaker 1: Answer Esk will acts, No, it's equinox. Escalax of course,
Speaker 1: is uh a medication that you take when you can't poop, right, Esk?
Speaker 1: Aal ax, Escalax a mythical creature, and escalax and a
Speaker 1: scalax is a mythical creature that you summon when you
Speaker 1: can't pick, and has the magical ability to help you pick.
Speaker 1: I think the escalax comes from the Simpsons. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a horse with the head of a rabbit and
Speaker 1: the body of a rabbit. Okay, I was not familiar
Speaker 1: with that one. That's a good one. Okay. One more
Speaker 1: fact I wanted to talk about before we wrap up,
Speaker 1: which I did think was kind of interesting, And that's
Speaker 1: simply the fact that there is an equivalent phenomenon. Now,
Speaker 1: you said that the earlier study found that there wasn't
Speaker 1: a tip of the tongue expression in American sign language,
Speaker 1: but there is a recognized tip of the fingers phenomenon
Speaker 1: deaf signers. And I think this is really interesting because
Speaker 1: when I'm thinking about what's going on in the tip
Speaker 1: of the tongue phenomenon, there seems to be a disconnect
Speaker 1: between the semantics. You have the semantics, you know what
Speaker 1: the word means, or you know what the actor's face
Speaker 1: looks like, or what movies he or she was in,
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, you have all the
Speaker 1: meaning information, you just can't connect it to the word,
Speaker 1: to the sounds of the words. There's a disconnect between
Speaker 1: semantics and phonology. But in in in sign language, you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily involving sounds. There, you might be involving hand
Speaker 1: motions and and different types of where the hands are placed,
Speaker 1: what you do with your fingers, the movement involved in
Speaker 1: the hand motions to gesture the name, and so there
Speaker 1: have been observations and studies about this tip of the
Speaker 1: fingers phenomenon, and I just thought that that was a
Speaker 1: very interesting parallel. It seems like the tip of whatever
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have to be sound. Yeah, that's interesting. It
Speaker 1: takes the same mental process outside of the sonic realm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like one of the things observed about it is that
Speaker 1: signers were often able to recall the first letter of
Speaker 1: a finger spelled word. Isn't that interesting the same way
Speaker 1: that you can usually you know, you you can think, oh,
Speaker 1: any pots, Well you can't think of any pots, but
Speaker 1: I know her name started with an a. People who
Speaker 1: who deaf signers can do the same thing it started
Speaker 1: with and then the hand sign for an a. Interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a whole study about this the if you want
Speaker 1: to look at up. It's called Tip of the Fingers
Speaker 1: Experiences by Deaf Signers, Insights into the Organization of a
Speaker 1: sign based Lexicon and Psychological Science in two thousand five. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I find this topic really interesting, not just because of
Speaker 1: the phenomenon, but because of what I brought up at
Speaker 1: the in the earlier section about how it highlights weird
Speaker 1: things about the nature of language that we don't usually
Speaker 1: think about, Like the one of the things is what
Speaker 1: people talk about in semiotics, you know, the difference between
Speaker 1: the signifier and the signified that we just often don't
Speaker 1: recognize that gap in between them, like the gap William
Speaker 1: James talks about there uh that that we can so
Speaker 1: easily come to identify a word with the thing it means,
Speaker 1: but the word is not the thing. And these these
Speaker 1: gaps where we have the object in mind, we have
Speaker 1: the face in mind, but we can't make the sounds
Speaker 1: to make it highlights some of the weird mechanical nature
Speaker 1: of meaning and its relationship to signs in our universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like when the machine is working, we don't think
Speaker 1: twice about it because we are we are the machine.
Speaker 1: But but when when When there are catastrophic errors, that's
Speaker 1: one thing. But these are every day, or at least,
Speaker 1: according to the study we're looking at, at least every week.
Speaker 1: We experience these errors, and it provides us just a
Speaker 1: little insight into what's going on. I think these errors
Speaker 1: can bring up interesting facts about our brain in the
Speaker 1: same way that seeing glitches in a computer game can
Speaker 1: make you understand a lot more about programming and how
Speaker 1: the game works. Because you might be say you're playing
Speaker 1: a computer game in some kind of three D rendered world,
Speaker 1: and you're just having it as a pure experience. You're
Speaker 1: in the world, you know it's all real, and your
Speaker 1: characters are real. Being in the world is real, and
Speaker 1: suddenly a glitch starts happening, you run through a wall
Speaker 1: or something, or part your you know, your arm comes
Speaker 1: off and floats free or something, and it suddenly snaps
Speaker 1: you back into the reality that that none of this
Speaker 1: is a true, organic, real experience. But it's all bits,
Speaker 1: you know, objects and bits of code that are functioning
Speaker 1: together perfectly well most of the time. But suddenly you
Speaker 1: understand what all the different bits and shapes are, and
Speaker 1: how they're made, and how they have to come together
Speaker 1: to create the seamless experience. Yeah, there's always something. There's
Speaker 1: something kind of magical about like the first time you
Speaker 1: walk through a wall and doom and you're standing in
Speaker 1: the sort of know that the ether outside of the
Speaker 1: of the game and you but you can look down
Speaker 1: and see those hallways just floating into nothing. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then of course up above there's the face of John
Speaker 1: Kazee looking over all of us. Indeed, along with any
Speaker 1: pots and don knots, a complete pantheon of of taught actors. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's all I got. You got anything else? That all
Speaker 1: I got? Um? Hey, but I know that everyone out
Speaker 1: there has some experience with this. What's the word that
Speaker 1: always sets you off? Yeah? What's that that one actor
Speaker 1: that never comes to mind when you try and imagine,
Speaker 1: try and try and remember their names. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you on all of that. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: check out stuff Toble your mind dot com. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find oh podcast episodes, videos. We have some cool
Speaker 1: new animated things that are going up where it's a
Speaker 1: little animated shorties that are clipped out of existing audio episodes.
Speaker 1: There's one up on ants. We have one coming up
Speaker 1: soon on Trepid Nation. Go check that out. Also, we
Speaker 1: have blog posts there leans out to our social media
Speaker 1: accounts such as Twitter and Facebook. We're blow the mind
Speaker 1: on both of those. We are stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind on tumbler, and I believe we'll blow the mind
Speaker 1: on Instagram. We're just getting that one up and rolling.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback about this episode or any other recent episodes,
Speaker 1: or if you want to let us know that thing,
Speaker 1: that thing that always sets you off, you just know it,
Speaker 1: it's just there. I'm just about to get it, but
Speaker 1: you can't quite get it. You can email us and
Speaker 1: you may just have to describe what it is because
Speaker 1: you can't come up with the word at blow the mind.
Speaker 1: At how stuff Works Doctor for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com