Can’t Think of a Word or Name? Help May Be a Tap Away

Can tapping on a table help you think of a word?

Source: DalL·E 3 /OpenAI

Few things are more frustrating than not being able to recall the name of someone or something that you’re certain you know. This annoying sensation—referred to as a “tip-of-the-tongue” state—has received plenty of attention from psychologists.

William James described the phenomenon in his Principles of Psychology in 1890, and it has been studied experimentally since the mid-1960s.

The Tip of the Tongue in the Lab

Inducing a tip-of-the-tongue state in a laboratory setting is surprisingly easy. Roger Brown and David McNeill discovered that providing research participants with the definitions of unusual or uncommon words, such as sextant or nepotism, could sometimes trigger this state.

In addition, they found that people in such a state could often report something about the term—such as its first letter or whether it was short or long—even if they were unable to retrieve the word itself (Brown and McNeill, 1966).

The tip-of-the-tongue state has several interesting attributes. It’s been shown, for example, that they are more likely to occur when people are with others than when they are by themselves. And even though this state increases as we get older, being aerobically fit seems to be protective, possibly because regular exercise benefits the brain in a variety of ways.

Perhaps most surprising, however, is a proposed link between tip-of-the-tongue states and motor movements. When someone can’t think of a word, they often gesticulate using their hands. These gestures could simply be a physical manifestation of the frustration that they feel—something akin to wringing one’s hands. But it’s also possible that they are beneficial in resolving these word-finding episodes.

Restricting Movement Impairs Word Finding

In a study conducted by Donna Frick-Horbury and Robert Guttentag, tip-of-the-tongue states were experimentally induced using Brown and McNeil’s paradigm. Members of one group of participants were asked to hold onto a rod as a way of preventing them from gesturing. Hand movements for a second group of participants were not restricted.

Both groups experienced a similar number of these episodes, but the participants in the unrestricted condition retrieved more of the sought-after words than those who could not freely move their hands. The unrestricted participants were also able to recall more of the words at the end of the study.

But perhaps holding onto a rod divided the participants’ attention instead of just preventing them from gesticulating. In a second study, the experimenters passively restrained movement for one group of subjects by having them keep their hands in the pockets of an apron. Once again, these participants were outperformed in word retrieval by those who had no restrictions on their ability to move their hands (Frick-Horbury and Guttentag, 1998).

The Short-Term Memory Constraints

A recent study by Jennie Pyers and her collaborators investigated the role of factors that might moderate the resolution of tip-of-the-tongue states. Their subjects participated in a picture-naming task in which one group was allowed to gesture while a second group was not. The participants who were free to gesture resolved their tip-of-the-tongue states at a higher rate than those whose movements were restricted—in this case, by putting their hands in gloves attached to boards.

The participants also had their verbal short-term memory assessed with the Wechsler Digit Span test. This involves repeating increasingly longer lists of numbers in their original order and also in reverse order.

The researchers found that the restricted gesture participants with less robust verbal STM performed more poorly than those with higher verbal STM. Importantly, however, this difference was not observed among those participants who were free to gesture.

Pyers and her collaborators proposed that gesturing reduces the cognitive load of retrieving a word from memory, but only for those individuals with limited short-term memory capacity (Pyers and colleagues, 2021).

To put it another way, people who find themselves in this state may spontaneously gesture because they have implicitly learned that such movements help produce a term that seems to be just out of reach. But it may be the case that this gesturing is more helpful for some people than for others.

Memory Essential Reads

Memory and the Sense of Self

Let Music Be Your Medicine

Tapping to Word-Finding Success

As we have seen, inhibiting one’s ability to spontaneously gesture can interfere with retrieving words from long-term memory. But could explicitly instructing participants to engage in hand movements facilitate the resolution of these states?

Susan Ravizza conducted a study to answer that question. She asked one group of participants, upon finding themselves in a tip-of-the-tongue state, to simply engage in tapping. Specifically, they were asked to tap with both index fingers, at a speed of their choosing.

These participants were able to retrieve sought-after words at higher rates than those who were instructed to remain still. Ravizza hypothesized that “facilitation may occur because of the activation of neural areas common to both speech and movement” (Ravizza, 2003, p. 610).

The next time you find yourself in such a state, try tapping on a nearby surface. This drumming may seem odd to others—but you may find that it turbocharges your word-finding. And it’s definitely less embarrassing than waving your hands in the air!