Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) are feelings of impending word retrieval success during a current failure to retrieve a target word. Though much is known and understood about TOT states from decades of research, research on potential psychophysiological correlates of the TOT state is still in its infancy, and existing studies point toward the involvement of neural processes that are associated with enhanced attention, motivation, and information-seeking. In the present study, we demonstrate that, during instances of target retrieval failure, TOT states are associated with greater pupillary dilation (i.e., autonomic arousal) in 91% of our sample. This is the first study to demonstrate a pupillometric correlate of the TOT experience, and this finding provides an important step toward understanding emotional attributes associated with TOT states. Mean pupil dilation also increased such that instances of target identification failure that were unaccompanied by TOT states < instances in which TOTs occurred < instances of target identification success. It is possible that TOTs reflect an intermediary state between complete target retrieval failure and full target retrieval.

舌尖上的状态 (TOT) 是在当前检索目标单词失败期间即将成功检索单词的感觉。尽管数十年的研究对 TOT 状态有很多了解和了解，但对 TOT 状态潜在心理生理相关性的研究仍处于起步阶段，现有研究指出与增强注意力、动机和信息相关的神经过程的参与- 寻求。在本研究中，我们证明，在目标检索失败的情况下，91% 的样本中的 TOT 状态与更大的瞳孔扩张（即自主神经觉醒）相关。这是第一项证明 TOT 体验与瞳孔测量相关的研究，这一发现为理解与 TOT 状态相关的情绪属性迈出了重要的一步。平均瞳孔扩张也增加，使得没有 TOT 状态的目标识别失败实例 < TOT 发生的实例 < 目标识别成功的实例。TOT 可能反映了完全目标检索失败和完全目标检索之间的中间状态。