Donald G. MacKay

On the tip of the tongue : what causes word finding failures in young and older adults ?

Abstract This paper develops a new theory of the tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon. Within this interactive activation model of speech production, TOTs occur when the connections between lexical and phonological nodes become weakened due to infrequent use, nonrecent use, and aging, causing a reduction in the transmission of priming. Predictions of the theory were examined using retrospective questionnaires, diary procedures, and a laboratory word retrieval task. In Study 1, young, midage, and older adults recorded naturally occurring TOTs in structured diaries during a four week interval in their everyday life. TOT targets were infrequent words in the language, and proper names, the largest category of TOT targets, were the names of acquaintances who had not been contacted recently, especially for older adults. Persistent alternates, i.e., incorrect words that came repeatedly to mind, shared phonology and grammatical class with TOT targets, and delayed TOT resolution. Older adults experienced more TOTs, but fewer persistent alternates. An influence of expectations on these age differences was ruled out by responses to the retrospective questionnaires, which indicated no age differences in expected number of TOTs. In Study 2, the basic results for age and persistent alternates were replicated in the laboratory for experimenter-selected TOT targets. The experimental study also demonstrated that proper names of famous people are especially vulnerable to TOTs in older adults.

Output Editing for Lexical Status in Artificially Elicited Slips of the Tongue

It was shown previously that spoonerisms (such as bad goof—gad boof) can be elicited by having subjects articulate a target (bad goof) preceded by bias items which contain at least the initial phoneme (/g/) of the desired error outcome. The present study takes advantage of the fact that two very similar targets such as darn bore and dart board will often have very different outcomes (e.g., the error outcome barn door is meaningful while bart doard is not). Any systematic difference in the rate of errors between these types of targets must be attributable to processes which take place after recoding of the target into its corresponding slip. It is thus possible to directly evaluate the effect of editing processes which apply only to the error outcome, and not to the target word pair. It is demonstrated that for lexical (L) targets, L outcomes are significantly more frequent than nonsense (N) outcomes. For N targets, the same generalization obtains, but only in a context that contains lexical filler items. There is no difference in the overall spoonerism rate on the basis of the lexical status of the error outcome unless the context clearly contains other lexical items. In such a context, nonlexical outcomes appear to be suppressed. Theoretical implications are discussed.

SPOONERISMS: THE STRUCTURE OF ERRORS IN THE SERIAL ORDER OF SPEECH

Spoonerisms are defined as involuntary rearrangements of elements in the serial order of speech, as when waste the term is produced as taste the werm. An analysis of 124 Spoonerisms in the natural speech of Germans showed that: 1. 1. Identical phonemes usually preceded (or followed) the reversed phonemes. 2. 2. Reversals preceding identical phonemes were as common as reversals following identical phonemes. 3. 3. Reversed phonemes usually had similar articulatory form, i.e. voicing, nasality, openness, and syllabic position were usually similar. But the place of articulation of reversed phonemes differed more frequently than would be expected by chance. Without serious revision chain-association theories appeared incapable of explaining these and other aspects of Spoonerisms. An alternative theory of serial order was proposed which had potential application not only to the pronunciation of words, but to the syntax of other forms of behavior and perception as well.

ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF COMPREHENSION, MEMORY AND ATTENTION

This paper proposed a two-stage model to capture some basic relations between attention, comprehension and memory for sentences. According to the model, the first stage of linguistic processing is carried out in short-term memory (M1) and involves a superficial analysis of semantic and syntactic features of words. The second stage is carried out in long-term memory (M2) and involves application of transformational rules to the analyses of M1 so as to determine the deep or underlying relations among words and phrases. According to the theory, attention is an M2 process: preliminary analyses by M1 are carried out even for unattended inputs, but final analyses by M2 are only carried out for attended inputs. The theory was shown to be consistent with established facts concerning memory, attention and comprehension, and additional support for the theory was obtained in a series of dichotic listening experiments.

Relations between emotion, memory, and attention: Evidence from taboo Stroop, lexical decision, and immediate memory tasks

This article reports five experiments demonstrating theoretically coherent effects of emotion on memory and attention. Experiments 1–3 demonstrated three taboo Stroop effects that occur when people name the color of taboo words. One effect is longer color-naming times for taboo than for neutral words, an effect that diminishes with word repetition. The second effect is superior recall of taboo words in surprise memory tests following color naming. The third effect is better recognition memory for colors consistently associated with taboo words rather than with neutral words. None of these effects was due to retrieval factors, attentional disengagement processes, response inhibition, or strategic attention shifts. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that taboo words impair immediate recall of the preceding and succeeding words in rapidly presented lists but do not impair lexical decision times. We argue that taboo words trigger specific emotional reactions that facilitate the binding of taboo word meaning to salient contextual aspects, such as occurrence in a task and font color in taboo Stroop tasks.

The structure of words and syllables: Evidence from errors in speech

Abstract This study examines syllabic and morphological determinants of synonymic intrusions such as BEHORTMENT, an inadvertent combination of BEHAVIOR and DEPORTMENT. Statistical analyses of 133 synonymic intrusions in German suggested that syllables are composed of at least three subunits: segments (consonants and vowels), consonant clusters, and a subunit consisting of vowel and final consonant(s). Similar analyses of 46 synonymic intrusions in English suggested that mechanisms underlying this class of error may be universal or common to all speakers. A hierarchic model of the serial order of speech was advanced to explain the structure of words and syllables suggested by these findings. Independent support for the model was noted in the rules governing abbreviations, Pig Latin, poetic rhyme, and other types of errors in speech.

Chapter Five Cognition and Aging: A Theory of New Learning and the Use of Old Connections

Summary This chapter describes a detailed theory of perception, production and memory for language and applies it to the problem of cognitive decline in old age. Altering a single parameter in the theory (rate of priming) was shown to account for a wide range of established age differences in cognitive ability, and to suggest an alternative framework for understanding some findings which in the past have seemed contradictory. Examples of these findings are effects of age on learning, rate of processing (general slowing), and the tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon. The theory postulates different mechanisms for retrieving existing representations in memory vs. learning new or unique representations and predicts that new learning will be especially vulnerable to aging. Specifically, the theory predicts that age differences will increase with the number of new connections required in a memory task, but will diminish if already established connections are sufficient to accomplish the task. This prediction cuts across specific paradigms and theoretical distinctions and applies to a broad range of memory phenomena. By way of illustration, we review findings from experimental studies of encoding specificity, implicit versus explicit memory, and semantic versus episodic priming, and show how the observed pattern of age differences is consistent with disruption of new, learning and preservation of memory involving existing, connections. The theory also makes some interesting and, genuinely new predictions for future research that are, spelled out here, for example, an age-linked decline in the, detection of speech errors.

The Problem of Rehearsal or Mental Practice

The present study examines several methodological and conceptual problems which in the past have made it difficult to accept the hypothesis that mental practice facilitates behavioral skill. An experiment on skill in speech production is then reported which overcomes the methodological problems. Subjects practice producing a sentence at maximal rate either mentally (mental practice) or overtly (physical practice) and then produced a transfer sentence which was either related or unrelated. The maximal rate of speech was faster for related than unrelated transfer sentences, and the degree of transfer for the mental and physical practice conditions was equivalent. A theory was developed to explain these results and overcome the conceptual problems outlined in the introduction. Implications of the theory for several related phenomena are discussed: rehearsal, errors in action, automatization, control processes in motor skills, speed-up as a function of practice, the relative advantages of physical vs. mental practice, and the evoked potentials accompanying mental rehearsal of an action.

Emotion, Memory, and Attention in the Taboo Stroop Paradigm An Experimental Analogue of Flashbulb Memories

This study tested the binding hypothesis: that emotional reactions trigger binding mechanisms that link an emotional event to salient contextual features such as event location, a frequently recalled aspect of naturally occurring flashbulb memories. Our emotional events were taboo words in a Stroop color-naming task, and event location was manipulated by presenting the words in different task-irrelevant screen locations. Seventy-two participants named the font color of taboo and neutral words, with instructions to ignore word meaning; in one condition, several words were location consistent (i.e., always occupied the same screen location), whereas in another condition, several colors were location consistent. Then, in a surprise recognition memory test, participants recalled the locations of location-consistent words or colors. Although attention enhanced overall location memory for colors (the attended dimension during color naming), emotion (taboo vs. neutral words) enhanced location memory for words but not colors. These results support the binding hypothesis but contradict the hypothesis that emotional events induce imagelike memories more often than nonemotional events.

Does emotion help or hinder immediate memory? Arousal versus priority-binding mechanisms

People recall taboo words better than neutral words in many experimental contexts. The present rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) experiments demonstrated this taboo-superiority effect for immediate recall of mixed lists containing taboo and neutral words matched for familiarity, length, and category coherence. Under binding theory (MacKay et al., 2004), taboo superiority reflects an interference effect: Because the emotional reaction system prioritizes binding mechanisms for linking the source of an emotion to its context, taboo words capture the mechanisms for encoding list context in mixed lists, impairing the encoding of adjacent neutral words when RSVP rates are sufficiently rapid. However, for pure or unmixed lists, binding theory predicted no better recall of taboo-only than of neutral-only lists at fast or slow rates. Present results supported this prediction, suggesting that taboo superiority in immediate recall reflects context-specific binding processes, rather than context-free arousal effects, or emotion-linked differences in rehearsal, processing time, output interference, time-based decay, or guessing biases.