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The tip-of-the-tongue state and curiosity

Overview of attention for article published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, July 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (91st percentile)
  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (57th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
2 news outlets
twitter
8 X users

Readers on

mendeley
78 Mendeley
Title
The tip-of-the-tongue state and curiosity
Published in
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, July 2017
DOI 10.1186/s41235-017-0065-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Janet Metcalfe, Bennett L. Schwartz, Paul A. Bloom

Abstract

Theories of study time allocation and of curiosity suggest that people are most engaged with and want to devote their time to materials that are not completely mastered but also are not so difficult that they might be impossible. Their curiosity is thought to be triggered by items that are almost known, or are in what is sometimes called the region of proximal learning. Answers that are on the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT)-not immediately recallable but nevertheless evoking a feeling of imminent recall-seem, intuitively, to be materials that have this characteristic of being almost, but not quite, fully known. We therefore, hypothesized that people would be particularly curious to see the answers to questions for which the answers were on the tips of their tongues. To test the TOT curiosity hypothesis, we gave participants 82 general information questions and quickly asked whether the answers were or were not on the tips of their tongues and whether they wanted to see the answers later. Overwhelmingly, items that were accompanied by a TOT feeling were those which evoked participants' curiosity, regardless of whether the feeling occurred in conjunction with an error of commission, an error of omission, or even with the correct answer.

Timeline
X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 8 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 78 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 78 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 19 24%
Student > Bachelor 8 10%
Student > Master 7 9%
Lecturer 5 6%
Student > Doctoral Student 4 5%
Other 14 18%
Unknown 21 27%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 27 35%
Neuroscience 5 6%
Social Sciences 4 5%
Linguistics 2 3%
Philosophy 2 3%
Other 12 15%
Unknown 26 33%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 26. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 09 June 2023.
All research outputs
#1,548,336
of 26,106,015 outputs
Outputs from Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
#80
of 380 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#29,390
of 330,340 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
#3
of 7 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,106,015 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 380 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 42.9. This one has done well, scoring higher than 78% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 330,340 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 7 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 4 of them.