Body language: Why words are on the tongue
 |
| Body-Language |
Body language:
What was his name again? What do you call that the same? Some terms are safely stored in the brain and can not be retrieved. The older you get, the more often you have words on your tongue. What happens in the head and what strategies help.
Anyone who lives in a clairaudient house inevitably gets to know his neighbors well. Recently, the resident on the floor above me was obviously feeling romantic, he put on something cuddly-rocky. There was a double torment for me in that: First, the music was very schmaltzy. And - worse - secondly: what was the name of the singer? All the basic data gave my memory effortlessly: Eighties, lousy hairstyle, Lady in Red, name consisted of three parts - but from which, damn it?
Psychologists call this frustrating experience tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. The word or a name is on your tongue but does not want to get out. One has not forgotten the term, but can not access it at the moment. Harvard researchers once compared the futile wrenching in memory with the moment just before sneezing. And the feeling, when the word has come back to you, with the relief of sneezing.
In old age, the language ability decreases
But until that happens, you endure some torments. "Oh no, I'm getting old," I thought immediately. And the fact is: Older people are more likely to find words than boys. This was confirmed by memory researcher Deborah Burke from Pomona College in several studies.
She has also found an explanation for this: Researchers today imagine the semantic system in the brain as a widely distributed neural network of interconnected nodes. It stores information about the language. Both the meanings of terms and their sound are shown there. The tip-tongue phenomenon activates the lexical meaning of the searched term, which triggers the strong feeling that one knows it. However, the phonological information, meaning the sound of the word, is only partially retrieved, suggests Deborah Burke. So it happens that you often come across only the first syllable of the word you are looking for, which you then helplessly try to supplement with others.
Spilled knowledge
As Burke asked her subjects with paraphrases after the word pylon, stammered by pirates and pilots (pirates and pilots). As you grow older, your connections with the phonological representations of words become weaker in the brain, and you find yourself more and more disoriented in your memory, like looking for the car that you've just parked here.
Burke also confirmed in her research the old principle of memory: "Use it or lose it." Their subjects experienced the tongue-tip phenomenon, especially when asked for words that they rarely used. Because the memory works pragmatically: The connections between nerve cells are trained or neglected and can, therefore, transmit good or bad signals. What one often needs, can therefore easily retrieve. What you do not need so often, is spilled.
It is advisable not to simply scoop up the name of a buried crooner, but to wait for the brain to "sneeze" it out. I did not think that Chris de Burgh could bring such a liberating feeling in me.