Emotional cues do not increase the likelihood of tip-of-the-tongue states

Abstract

In a recent article, Schwartz (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17:82-87, 2010) reported the effects of emotion on tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs). He found increased TOTs for emotion-inducing questions, as well as a carryover effect in which high TOT rates were observed following emotion-inducing questions. In the present study, we sought to replicate these findings while controlling for word frequency, but we found an increased TOT rate neither for emotion-inducing questions nor following emotion-inducing questions. We report three attempts to replicate Schwartz's (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17:82-87, 2010) effect that focused on systematic differences in word frequency between stimulus sets in the original study; none of the key findings reported by Schwartz (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17:82-87, 2010) were found in any of the experiments. These results fail to support prior claims concerning the effects of emotion on TOTs Schwartz (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17:82-87, 2010). The discussion focuses on the importance of controlling for systematic differences in word characteristics between groups of items.