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The present study demonstrates a counterintuitive pattern regarding the affective nature of the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon (when a currently inaccessible word feels right on the verge of retrieval). First, TOT reports were more likely for questions corresponding to positively valenced than negatively valenced targets. Second, TOT states were associated with a bias toward inferring positive characteristics regarding the unretrieved information. During TOT states, participants inferred a greater likelihood that the unretrieved target was positively valenced (Experiment 1), that it was earlier presented with a higher value number (Experiment 2), and that a pictured celebrity whose name was unretrieved was ethical (Experiment 3). The association between TOTs and positive affect, including the positivity bias during TOTs, is analogous to the "warm glow" phenomenon shown with familiarity. Like familiarity, TOT states may be associated with a warm glow feeling. This warm glow feeling, in turn, may lead to a positivity bias regarding the unretrieved information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most people have experienced the sensation of having a word on the tip of the tongue. A common assumption is that a major driving force underlying the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state is conscious partial recollective access to some of the unretrieved word's attributes, such as its first letter. In the present study, under free-report conditions, participants provided more partial recollection responses during TOTs than non-TOTs without being more accurate among their provided responses. Under forcedguessing conditions in which participants needed to guess at the unidentified target word's first letter, participants exhibited false partial recollective experience during TOTs. This was shown by a strong tendency during TOTs to indicate that they knew the first letter, when in actuality, they were wrong in their first-letter guess. An additional experiment showed illusory partial recollection of a contextual detail during TOTs relative to non-TOTs. The full pattern of results portrays an alternative possible theoretical relationship between TOT states and subjective partial recollective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognition without identification (RWI) is a common day-to-day experience (as when recognizing a face or a tune as familiar without being able to identify the person or the song). It is also a well- established laboratory-based empirical phenomenon: When identification of recognition test items is prevented, participants can discriminate between studied and unstudied test items. The present study demonstrates this finding in the realm of music. A song RWI effect is reported across 4 experiments, despite very low identification rates in each. The effect was found with unidentifiable song fragments (Experiment 1), with song notes removed from their original rhythms (Experiment 2), and with songs unidentifiable from their tapped out rhythms (Experiments 3 and 4). Theoretical implications of these results are relevant to both the study of familiarity-based recognition and the study of music cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]