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Characteristics of language production:– Coordinating multiple sources of

information in real timeMethodological issues

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Overview of the production architecture

Lexical representation:– Tip of the tongue states

Levelt’s (1989) modelLevelt’s (1989) model

FormulationFormulation

Linguistic encoding of conceptual message

Speaker must choose appropriate lexical items to convey intended message

Lexical representations incorporate semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological content

How are these retrieved?

The “tip-of-the-tongue” The “tip-of-the-tongue” experienceexperience

“an instrument used for measuring angular distances, used especially in navigation to observe the altitude of celestial bodies”– The tip-of-the-tongue experience

occurs when people are sure a word is in memory but they are unable to access it

“The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate them. They do not fit into its mould. And the gap of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps.” (William James, 1890, pp. 251-252)

How to studyHow to study

Naturalistic studies (e.g., using a diary)– suggest fairly frequent (a few times a week)– other instances may be forgotten

Experimental procedures– usually, recall to a definition

Though also sometimes pictures

– state “things you know” about the word E.g., first sound, number of syllables

– often test if the word is later recalled– sometimes deliberately induce TOT states

Eliciting tips-of-the-Eliciting tips-of-the-tonguetongue

Brown & McNeill (1966)Brown & McNeill (1966) Studied 56 American undergraduates. 49 low-frequency words (e.g., apse, nepotism, sampan),

prompted by brief definitions. On c. 8.5% of trials, tip-of-the-tongue state ensued:

– Had to guess word's first or last letters, the number of syllables it contained, and which syllable was stressed

Total of 360 TOT states:– 233 ="positive TOTs" (subject was thinking of target word, and

produced scorable data– 127 = "negative TOTs" (subject was thinking of other word, but

could not recall it)– 224 similar-sound TOTs (e.g., Saipan for sampan)

48% had the same number of syllables as the target– 95 similar-meaning TOTs (e.g., houseboat for sampan).Of the SS

items 20% had same number of syllables as target. 

Some findings Some findings

Experimental procedures often generate TOTs on about 10-15% of trials– Seems to occur for most people– Seems to occur for most items tested– probably less with very frequent or

very infrequent words

What information is What information is recalled?recalled?

“The rhythm of the lost word may be there without the sound to clothe it; or the evanescent sense of something which is the initial vowel or consonant may mock us fitfully, without growing more distinct.” (James, 1890, p. 251)

Partial access?Partial access?

Similar words come to mind about half the time– but how much is just guessing?– First letter: correct 50-71% of time (vs. 10%

by chance)– first sound: 36% of time (vs. 6% by chance)

Additional letters: less but above chance– more for last than middle letters– hence, a U-shaped curve– so first letter is privileged (a “pointer”?)

Other aspectsOther aspects

Knowledge of number of syllables seems above chance

Knowledge of other aspects of the word they are looking for

Patients with anomiaPatients with anomia

Patients show more extreme patterns of word-finding difficulty – e.g. EST (Kay & Ellis, 1987)

may be like an exaggeration of normal TOT states

Is the experience Is the experience universal?universal?

Schwartz (1999) found that 45 out of 51 languages use the “tongue” metaphor, suggesting that it probably is universal– not in Icelandic, Amharic,

Indonesian, Kiswahili, Kalenjin– no “tip of the finger” expression in

American Sign Language

Translations of Translations of expressionsexpressions

“on the tongue” “on the tip/point/head of the

tongue”– most common

“on the top of the tongue” “on the front of the tongue”“sparkling at the end of the tongue”“in the mouth and throat”

Word production & TOTsWord production & TOTs

TOTs and Anomias suggest a basic split between semantics/syntax and phonology:– people can access meaning and

grammar but not pronunciation

What might be known in a What might be known in a TOT?TOT?

Semantics Syntax

– grammatical category (“part of speech”) e.g. noun, verb, adjective

– Gender e.g. le chien, la vache; le camion, la voiture

– Number e.g. dog vs. dogs; trousers vs. shirt

– Count/mass status e.g. oats vs. flour

Vigliocco et al. (1997)Vigliocco et al. (1997)

Subjects presented with word definitions– Gender was always arbitrary

If unable to retrieve word, they answered– How well do you think you know the word?– Guess the gender– Guess the number of syllables– Guess as many letters and positions as possible– Report any word that comes to mind

Then presented with target word– Do you know this word?– Is this the word you were thinking of?

Vigliocco et al (1997)Vigliocco et al (1997)

+ TOT– Both reported some correct

information in questionnaire– And said yes to recognition question

- TOT– Otherwise

Overall, 9% + TOT; 19% - TOT

Vigliocco et al (1997)Vigliocco et al (1997)

+ TOT: 84% correct gender guess - TOT: 53% correct gender guess

– chance level Conclusion

– Subjects often know grammatical gender information even when they have no phonological information

– Supports split between syntax and phonology in production

Vigliocco, Vinson, Martin Vigliocco, Vinson, Martin & Garrett (1999)& Garrett (1999)

English: Count vs mass nouns (e.g., egg vs sugar)– Definitions to elicit ToT:

Final part that typically serves to round out or complete the design of a literary work; conclusion (EPILOGUE)

White, fatty cartilage found in meat (GRISTLE)

– Asked whether participants could tell them which was appropriate:

There is_/There is a _ There won’t be much_/There won’t be many_ There is some_/There are a few_

– Better at this when in +TOT than –TOT state

Separate components Separate components in language productionin language production Language production appears effortless

and therefore “one stage” TOT data suggest this is wrong –

production can be difficult It seems to break down “in the middle”

– Semantic processing can be OK “I know what I’m trying to say”

– But phonological processing can be impaired “but I just can’t think of the word”

– Vigliocco and colleagues’ studies suggest syntax can be accessed without phonology

Other evidenceOther evidence

Much other evidence for the same conclusion– TOT data showing other syntactic knowledge

(Vigliocco et al., 1999, and Caramazza and Miozzo, 1997, on grammatical gender)

– Other TOT data (e.g., priming data - Rastle & Burke, 1996)

– other aphasia data (Badecker et al., 1995; Henaff Gonon et al., 1989)

– slips of the tongue, experiments on time-course of retrieval etc. (see later)

Separable componentsSeparable components

Hence, a “barrier” between phonological and semantic processing

Evidence emerging for a “barrier” between phonological and syntactic processing

Speech error dataSpeech error data

Substitution errors:– All I want is something for my

shoulders [intended: elbows]– I’ve got whipped cream on my

mushroom [intended: moustache]  Exchange errors: 

– I left the briefcase in my cigar– Do you reel feally bad?

Speech errorsSpeech errors

Two types of errors (semantic and phonological)– errors at different stages in the production

process?

Semantic exchange errors– exchanges tend to be same grammatical

class– exchanges tend to occur between phrases– don’t need to occur in similar phonological

environments

Speech errorsSpeech errors

 Phonological exchange errors– need not be words– tend to be adjacent words, or at least

within phrase– tend to be different grammatical classes

Hence, errors support the notion of two production stages, in accord with TOT data.

Lemma and Word-FormLemma and Word-Form

Word form (Lexeme): phonologically specified representation

Lemma: representation specifying syntactic features– in some accounts, also specifies

semantic information– but the recent evidence supports a

purely syntactic lemma

Lemmas and word-formsLemmas and word-forms

 Normally, accessing a word involves lemma access followed rapidly by word-form access

 But sometimes only the lemma is accessed– during TOT state– regularly in anomic patients

Lemmas vs word-formsLemmas vs word-forms

 In models of sentence production, syntactic processing occurs before phonological processing – syntactic processing uses lemma– phonological processing uses word-

form

Levelt et al (1999) modelLevelt et al (1999) model Lemma may consist of a “node” containing

information about the “base form” of a word (e.g. give) and “pointers” to syntactic features, e.g.:– grammatical number (singular or plural, normally)– grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter –

depending on language)– category (noun, verb, etc.)– subcategory (transitive verb, intransitive verb, etc.)– count or mass noun– tense of verb (present, past, etc.)

Two accounts of TOTsTwo accounts of TOTs

Blocking – target is suppressed by a stronger competitor– rememberers retrieve “blockers” or

“interlopers” related to the correct target– these interlopers inhibit the correct target– but rememberers recognise the interlopers

as incorrect as well Partial activation – target is only

weakly represented

Partial activationPartial activation

Meyer and Bock (1992) provide indirect evidence for partial activation (contra earlier findings):– Participants produced responses to

definitions– Definitions accompanied by cues

related in sound to target (phonological cue) related in meaning to target (semantic cue)

– we’ll ignore unrelated to target (unrelated cue)

Meyer & Bock (1992) Meyer & Bock (1992)

Blocking hypothesis– phonological cue should interfere

with target access i.e., decrease correct responses relative

to unrelated cue Partial activation hypothesis

– phonological cue should assist target access

i.e., increase correct responses relative to unrelated cue

Experiment 1: Cue before Experiment 1: Cue before targettarget

Cueing condition

No. of correct targets

No. of TOT states

Phonological 1013 628

Semantic 951 682

Unrelated 917 658

Meyer and Bock (1992)Meyer and Bock (1992)

Critically, more correct responses following phonological cue than unrelated cue– phonological information provides

activation in lexical selection– and TOT states due to partial

activation rather than blocking– note, hard to interpret the TOT states

themselves

Experiment 2: Cue after Experiment 2: Cue after initial responseinitial response

Cueing condition

correct tgts reported before cue

correct tgts reported after cue

No. of TOT states

Phonological

697 108 578

Semantic 701 49 635

Unrelated 667 28 564

Meyer & Bock (1992)Meyer & Bock (1992)

– no differences between conditions before cue (as expected)

– But differences after cueAgain, more correct responses

following phonological cue than unrelated cue– supports partial activation account again– facilitation works with a late

presentation of the cue

Partial activationPartial activation

See also Harley and Brown (1998)– TOTs are more common for words

with few phonological neighbours (i.e. few words that differ by only one phoneme from the target)

– Hence suggests that neighbours facilitate rather than inhibit target retrieval

SummarySummary

3 stages to production:– Conceptualisation– Formulation– Articulation

Formulation involves lexical retrieval:– Semantic/syntactic content (lemma)– Phonological content (word-form)

Lemma can be retrieved without word-form necessarily being retrieved

When this occurs, ToT state ensues

Phenomenology and Phenomenology and metacognitionmetacognition

Doctrine of concordance: very high correlation between cognitive processes, behaviour and phenomenological experience

Tulving (1989) criticised this doctrine – for instance, retrieval is not the same as the experience of recollection – e.g., words are often retrieved during

speech without any experience of recollection

– “mental time travel” only occurs in certain situations involving episodic memory

– other non-retrieval factors affect our judgement of “pastness”

For instance, metacognition literature demonstrates clear differences between “feeling of knowing” and actual knowledge

Two separate components:– one carries out the process (“object-level”)– the other monitors the process (“meta-level”)

TOT states could reflect meta-level processes

Cues and cue Cues and cue familiarityfamiliarity

TOTs are not based on sensitivity to inaccessible targets

Instead, rememberers infer the target’s existence from clues– the cue (e.g., the definition)– retrieved partial information– any other generated information

Thus, Reder (1987) and Reder and Ritter (1992)– rapid judgements of feeling of

knowing (e.g., What is the capital of Peru?) depend on familiarity with the terms in the question

– these judgements are improved by priming the terms in the questions, not by priming the answers

Koriat and Lieblich (1977) – more repetitive definitions led to more TOTs – suggests that cue factors play a role in TOT

states Schwartz – TOTs are a “lens” to bring

phenomenology into focus, not a “window” on the nature of retrieval – a note of caution – but lots of parallels between TOT data and

other tests of lexical retrieval mechanisms

                                                           

                   

And more recently still, Harley and Bown (1998) varied the frequency and phonological distinctiveness of the target words and found "that TOTs are more likely to arise on low-frequency words that have few close phonological neighbours" (p151). They use their data to reflect upon the broader process of "lexicalisation"[glossary], which they define as "the process of phonological retrieval in speech production given a semantic input" (p152), and they opt for a "two-stage" explanatory model of lexical access, that is to say, a model which strictly separates each word's semantic and phonological representations. TOTs can therefore be seen as arising "when the first stage of lexical access is completed successfully, but not the second" (pp152-153). However, the critical point as far as Harley and Bown are concerned is as follows .....

"Our central result is that phonological neighbours contribute to, rather than hinder, phonological retrieval in speech production. [.....] A TOT occurs when the semantic specification successfully accesses the abstract lemma [glossary]. This causes the 'feeling of knowing' the word. Nevertheless, the lemma is then unable to pass sufficient activation onto and thereby access the corresponding phonological word form. [.....] There are two possible reasons for failure at this stage. Either the connections between the lemma and the phonological forms might be weakened, or the phonological forms might themselves be weakly represented for these items." (Harley and Bown, 1998, p162)