Why your brain just can't remember that word (btw bilingualism makes it harder)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17263-why-your-brain-just-cant-remember-that-word.html

by amichail • 17 years ago

37 26 17 years ago

joeyo2• 17 years ago

I think I would gladly put up with more tip-of-the-tongue syndrome in exchange for for early-age bilingualism.

Timothee• 17 years ago

Early-age is probably key. I am French and have lived in the US for a few years and I can feel that I sometime struggle a little with French now... (I'm not saying I'm exactly bilingual though, fluent seems enough to confuse me)

mahmud5• 17 years ago

I switch between 3 languages without thought while speaking, however, to write in one I would need to pause for a few seconds to collect my thoughts (I need a whole day to switch context to write poetry or reasoned prose.)

While skimming this text I caught myself saying this to my brother, see how much of it can you understand:

"Accountkayga charge-garee caawa, depositku wuxuu ku dhacayaa yawmayn aw thalatha".

Three English words with Somali conjugation suffixed with a pure arabic phrase. Wrong in three languages :-P

sahaj• 17 years ago

i know three languages and i suck at remembering words when i need to. i am fairly good at grabbing onto concepts, but have a hard time remembering the word that's used to describe the concept.

mahmud5• 17 years ago

You're not reading or listening enough. Languages need maintenance.

startingup• 17 years ago

I am fluent in two languages, and I have encountered the exact problem described in the article: I am trying to recall a word, and find that I can't. At times I can recall the beginning letter, even the rough sound of the word, but not the word itself. Then the word will come to me a few moments later in a flash. The embarrassing part is when this happens during a conversation; I have resorted to filler sentences or repeating myself as my brain searches frantically for that right word.

I used to worry if it was some kind of early warning of Alzheimers ... good to know this phenomenon has a more benign explanation too.

whacked_new3• 17 years ago

> I have resorted to filler sentences or repeating myself as my brain searches frantically for that right word.

I have gotten into the habit of first declaring what the word starts with, sounds like, and approximates. This lets the listener help me out. Then I usually use a metaphor, which is often inappropriate: "how much groping in the dark did you have when you [started using this analysis software]?" Then I get weird looks but you end up grabbing their attention, sometimes they find the word for you, and other times the vocabulary comes back to you a few sentences later.

In the above example, I didn't find the word, but thankfully the point made its way across. It was further weird because this was at an MRI scanner, so somebody was literally "groping in the dark."

I also remember embarrassingly forgetting the word for "fly" (bug), pointing around in the air, and said, "the, the, the, thing." I use pronouns lavishly too: did you cut a hole in the thing to put the thing in the thing? --> did you cut a hole in the wood block to put the slab's protrusion into the wood block?

joetrumpet• 17 years ago

It's very interesting to see a study with negative effects of multilingualism. I experience this a lot and never even considered it could partially be caused by knowing multiple languages. I'm extremely curious to see how much the effect increases as number of languages does (as far as I'm aware this is fairly common for Europeans)--hopefully it's a diminishing effect!

whacked_new3• 17 years ago

This is why rapid switching between two native languages is the easiest way for coordinate bilinguals to talk (listen to Latin American folks on the NYC subway). No tip of the tongue there, and always the most apt expression at the right time.

knowtheory• 17 years ago

That's really irrelevant to the point at hand (as well as rather speculative.

The disfluencies that this study looks at regards rarely used words. Fluent casual speech isn't the best place to look for such disfluencies anyway, so i don't know that listening to people on the subway is a good demonstration.

Also, while code-switching may be a way to get around tip of the tongue experiences, it is a considerably more complicated phenomenon, and there is likely to be a variety of other factors and considerations to take into account when studying code-switching.

whacked_new3• 17 years ago

Good call.

The speculation isn't unfounded though, although it isn't appreciably strong here. Word choice comes substantially faster when the most efficient expression can be chosen without any self-monitoring. It's quite plausible that in this case you'll find less instances of tip of the tongue.

While the experiment here relied on rare words, and I'm just one data point, but I get ToT probably once for every 2000 words I say. When rapid code-switching is consciously available, I can quickly avert it because I have fast access to good candidate words, which reduces the apparent occurrence.

If ToT is taken as a speech disfluency from unresolved competition for word access, you could mitigate it simply by creating an imbalance between the signal strength such that winner takes all (in which case the subway example does demonstrate something useful, although as you point out, the variables are jumbled up). Somehow I got a deja vu just now. This has been discussed here before, or somewhere, or what I am writing is coming from something else I have read...

I also realize that ToT cannot be reduced to simple competition, but it is also plausible that slow access and competition manifest similarly, i.e. obstructed speech flow, while partial semantic access. WEAVER++ tried to explain this and I liked it very much (obviously I don't know what's state of the art now).

nicara• 17 years ago

What I find similarly odd about bilingualism is that often I can't seem to translate one of the languages I speak into another. I don't have any problems expressing my thoughts in whatever form in either language, but converting already thought stuff from one language to the other is extremely hard. Maybe this stems from the way I learn languages (I've never been able to relate to the classroom-way of teaching; learned everything from talking to friends / reading prose in the foreign language - I don't think about which language to speak in, it just comes naturally, maybe best seen by the fact that I can dream in 3 languages, depending on what language I've spoken most on that particular day), so it might be hard to reproduce so you guys probably can't see what I'm saying, can you. :/

riahi• 17 years ago

I learned three languages when I was younger (Persian first, then English and Spanish at the same time) and can swap into them instantaneously. However, the languages I learned later (Portuguese and now some smatterings of Chinese) require me to stop, think, and listen for about 10-15 minutes before the language takes over in my mind, and I may converse more fluidly. This contrast alone is quite interesting for me.

lionheart• 17 years ago

Wow, that explains why this happens so often with me and my family. We're all bilingual and quite often can't think of the right word.

However, if we are just speaking amongst ourselves its a lot easier because usually while you can't remember the word in the language you should be using, you remember its synonym in the other language.

Hexstream• 17 years ago

What about those people who know a high number of languages, say 8? Do they get tip-of-the-tongue moments all the time?

truebosko• 17 years ago

I was born and raised Polish and lately I've been talking it way more since my Grandpa is in the country. I've definitely experienced this.

I usually find myself knowing the word in English but instead of it coming out, my brain keeps thinking and trying to spit out the Polish word. Then, a second later it clicks or someone corrects me. It's annoying, but I'd rather speak two languages than just one :)

ahoyhere• 17 years ago

This article made me feel much better about the sense of creeping doom I've developed when I have become unable to think of the English word I wanted. (I'm an American expat who moved to Austria.)

Who cares about the science... I feel validated! :)

Why your brain just can't remember that word (btw bilingualism makes it harder)

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