Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) is described as “a retrieval state in which a person feels he or she knows the information but cannot immediately retrieve it”(Reed, 2010/2013, p. 380). Throughout this paper, three views of Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) states will be explored. The first article talks about how cognate status, syllable position, and word lengths affect TOT states in European Portuguese (EP) – English bilinguals. European Portuguese monolinguals were used as the control group (Pureza, Soares, & Comesana, 2016). The second article explains the effects of cognate and translations on TOT states in English monolinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and Tagalog-English bilinguals (Gollan & Acenas, 2003). Finally the third article will look at translation-priming effects on TOT states only in Spanish-English bilinguals (Gollan, Ferreira, Cera, & Flett, 2013).
In 2016, Rita Pureza, Ana Paula Soares, and Montserrat Comesana published a research article from an experiment performed on European Portuguese (EP: L1) monolinguals and European Portuguese-English (L2) bilinguals (INSERT CITATION). They proposed that ______________________________________________________________________________
Pureza, Soares, and Comesana used one hundred and twenty bilinguals proficient in European Portuguese (EP) – English. All EP – English bilinguals were EP native speakers, but highly proficient in English based on the Senaski and Zhao (2006) language history questionnaire. The questionnaire ranged from 1 to 7, with 1 being poor proficiency and 7 being native-like proficiency. Fifty-five EP native monolinguals were used as a control group. To test the hypothesis, tasks such as picture naming, a lexical decision task (LTD), and a recognition task. In the picture naming task, 80 pictures were used to induce TOT states and for the LTD, eight words and eight pseudowords were used for each pictures to try and orchestrate “the role of the syllable position in TOT resolution” (DIRECT QUOTE CITATION). Firstly, a picture was manifested in the center of the screen and participants were asked whether they knew what the picture was, did not know that the picture was, or if they were having a TOT state. TOT states were explained to the participants if they “knew the name of the object depicted by the picture but could not remember it in that particular moment” (DIRECT QUOTE CITATION). Secondly, and LDT was performed and participants were asked if the sequence of letters in front of them was a word or “non-word” (QUOTE CITATION) in the language they were using, either English or EP. Finally, in the recognition task, the participants were asked to choose which designation they chose during the experiment out of the three that were presented.
The results for this experiment were manifested into two different sections. The first section is talks about the data related to TOT induction in picture naming. TOT states were found to be higher in bilinguals when performing tasks in English, rather than in EP. TOT states were also more induced of noncognate words rather than cognate words. Also, the researchers found that when bilinguals would fulfill a task in EP, they showed more states of TOT in longer (three syllable) words rather than shorter (two syllable) words, but word lengths were not observed when carrying out the task in English. The second section is presented as the results of TOT resolutions. The results for TOT resolution exemplified that lengths of words and the cognate status of a word modified the data. As expected by the researchers, Bilinguals were found to have more TOT resolution for “three-syllable cognate words than two-syllable cognate words” (DIRECT QUOTATION) as well as “more TOT resolutions for cognate words in their less frequently used language, (English)” (DIRECT QUOTATION). Coinciding with their hypothesis and frequency-lag theory, bilinguals were found to show more TOTs for English than EP, and more TOTs for noncognates when comparing to cognate words. Pureza, Soares, and Comesana also revealed, that contradicting their hypothesis, TOT resolutions were presented more in bilinguals when primed by the first syllable in the word, rather than the last syllable or no syllable at all. This result was regardless of what language was in use. Overall, this study displays evidence of TOT induction and TOT resolutions when comparing bilingual and monolingual speakers. Results in this overall study said that bilinguals have a greater TOT states when speaking in their second language, in this case it would be English.
In a 2004 study conducted by Tamar H. Gollan and Lori-Ann R. Acenas, they studies TOT states in Spanish-English and Tagalog-English Bilinguals. Tagalog is the native language in the Philippines. These researchers used pictures stimuli with noncognate names and cognate names. They noticed that Bilinguals, from both Spanish-English and Tagalog-English had more TOT states than the monolinguals did. However, this was true if the picture did not have a “translatable cognate name” (DIRECT QUOTE). Gollan and Acenas proposed to identify the effects that cognate status and target translatability had on TOT state. Their two goals were to to impel accounts of the TOT phenomenon and of the increased rates of TOT in bilinguals.