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Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon

  • Today, I will talk about tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon.

    舌先現象


    The tip of the tongue phenomenon is a phenomenon that though you’re about to recall something, you can’t.
    今日は、舌先現象を紹介します。

    There are some cases: you’re retrieving a similar sound word that has a different meaning, you’re retrieving a similar meaning word that has a different sound, you’re retrieving only a first character of the word, and so on.
    舌先現象とは、思い出せそうでなかなか物事を思い出せない現象です。

    Memory retrieval of human beings is sophisticated and is performed quite quickly, but the speed will become slow when you’re in the TOT states.
    意味が類似した音の異なる単語はわかっているケース、音が類似した意味の異なる単語はわかっているケース、最初の文字はわかっているケースなど、さまざまあるようです。

    By the way, the phenomenon is called “nodo made dekakatteiru” (which means something like “something is about to come to my throat”) in Japan.
    人間の記憶検索は非常に高度かつ高速に行われますが、この状態での検索のスピードは大分遅くなるようです。

    Original sentence