The “Tip-of-the-Tongue” Phenomenon in Aphasia

The results indicated that conduction aphasics were superior to Wernicke's and anomic asphasics in their ability to identify both the first letter and the syllabic length of the words they could not name.

Abstract

Forty-two male aphasics, classified as Broc's, Wernicke's, anomic, and conduction, were examined for their ability to partially retrieve acoustic features of words they could not provide in a confrontation naming task (the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon). The results indicated that conduction aphasics were superior to Wernicke's and anomic asphasics in their ability to identify both the first letter and the syllabic length of the words they could not name. Since the aphasic groups were comparable in their naming difficulty, the findings could not be attributed to degree of wordfinding impairment. The difference between groups that were obtained using the TOT technique are discussed with regard to differences in the word finding process.