“What is it called?!” “I know what you mean, it lies at the tip of my tongue...I just cannot think of it!” – Expressions like these are used quite frequently in our everyday lives. These so called Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences occur throughout all age bands, yet, older adults seem to experience them more often than younger adults do. But they also differ in various types of words: This phenomenon constitutes the basis of this research. Many previous studies investigating this topic focused on proper nouns as a word type, which is why the present study will focus on homonyms and polysemes in order to analyze if older adults perform differently in a picture naming and a question task between those two word types and also compared to younger adults. The anticipated findings are that older adults will have difficulties retrieving one word type compared to the other and also perform worse than the younger adults in both tasks overall. These results will show that word retrieval is therefore influence by the normal aging process.
Inhaltsverzeichnis (Table of Contents)
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Research Question
- Relevance
- Topic of Study
- Hypothesis
- Previous Research
- Set-up of the study
- Results
- Discussion
- References
- Appendix
Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte (Objectives and Key Themes)
This research paper investigates the variation of tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences in different word types, particularly homonyms and polysemes, comparing performance between older and younger adults. The study aims to determine if there are age-related differences in the retrieval of these specific word types and how these differences may relate to the aging process and word retrieval decline.
- Age-related differences in TOT experiences
- Word retrieval processes in older adults
- The role of homonyms and polysemes in word retrieval
- The impact of aging on semantic and phonological representations of words
- The relevance of TOT experiences for understanding cognitive decline in aging
Zusammenfassung der Kapitel (Chapter Summaries)
The abstract provides an overview of the study's focus on TOT experiences and how they vary across age groups and word types. The introduction delves into the research question, its relevance, the topic of study, and the hypotheses that will be tested. The "Previous Research" section explores existing studies on TOT experiences in relation to aging, particularly emphasizing the increased frequency of these experiences in older adults.
Schlüsselwörter (Keywords)
The primary keywords and focus topics include tip-of-the-tongue experiences, word retrieval, aging, homonyms, polysemes, semantic representation, phonological representation, cognitive decline, and age-related differences.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Melanie Pongratz (Autor:in), 2016, The Variation of Tip-of-the-Tongue experiences in different word types, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/454902
