Watch Your Language Blog

Bilingualism and Tip-Of-The-Tongue Experiences

An article at The New Scientist discusses an experiment on the relationship between speaking more than one language and not being able to remember the word for something.

To provoke tip-of-the-tongue moments, the researchers showed the bilinguals, as well as a control group of 22 English monolinguals, pictures of dozens of different objects and challenged the volunteers to name them in 30 seconds. The viewed objects - which included axes, weathervanes, gyroscopes, nooses and metronomes - were obscure enough to elicit tip-of-the-tongue experiences in all but one participant.

As with previous experiments, monolinguals had fewer tip-of-the-tongue experiences than bilinguals, about 7 words versus 12, out of a total of 52 - though Pyers' team counted only instances where the volunteer knew the word.

Tags: bilingualism
June 12, 2009