TALKING TO EACH OTHERabout Eskimos having more words for snow than the rest of us, thus
enabling them to identify differences in snow types that others are blind
to. In Ludwig Wittgenstein’s words, “The limits of my language mean the
limits of my world.”
Supporting this idea is a series of studies conducted by the psycholo-
gist Peter Gordon with members of the remote Pirahã tribe of Brazil.
The Pirahã, like many other hunter-gatherer societies, only have words
for the numbers one, two and many. They have no currency but instead
barter goods. Gordon tested tribe members on a series of numerical
matching tasks – for example, he would place a number of batteries
in a row, and their task was to lay out the same number underneath.
Crucially, their performance suggested they were unable to think about
numbers for which they lacked the words. They did fine when there were
That tip-of-the-tongue feeling
There are few things more frustrating than knowing you know a word
but not being able to dig it out of your mental filing-cabinet. What’s
particularly irritating is that we often experience this retrieval failure
for the same words. According to the psychologists Amy Warriner and
Karin Humphreys, it’s not that some words are particularly tricky, it’s
that when we’re in a tip-of-the-tongue state, we’re actually learning the
wrong way of finding a word. It’s as if we’re repeatedly looking in the
wrong drawer for our keys, to such an extent that it becomes habitual.
Warriner and Humphreys tested this idea by giving definitions of
obscure words to thirty students. Whenever the students experienced
a tip-of-the-tongue state, the researchers waited either ten or thirty
seconds before giving them the answer. Two days later, the students
were more likely to have a repeat tip-of-the-tongue state for a given
word if they’d previously experienced thirty seconds of having the
word on the tip of their tongue – rather than just ten seconds. This
is consistent with the idea that when the students were made to
wait thirty seconds, they were spending more time reinforcing the
incorrect pattern of activation that was causing their tip-of-the-tongue
sensation in the first place. “Metaphorically speaking,” the researchers
explained, “this is akin to spinning one’s tyres in the snow, resulting in
nothing more than the creation of a deeper rut.” So, to avoid repeat
tip-of-the-tongue experiences, the secret is to find out what the
elusive word is as soon as possible, either by looking it up, or asking
someone. Once you have the correct word, say it to yourself, out loud
or mentally, so as to consolidate the correct memory. On the other
hand, if you can’t get any help locating a word, stop trying, because
all you’re doing is reinforcing the habit of looking in the wrong place.