Retrieval difficulty and subsequent recall

The notion that difficult initial retrieval facilitates subsequent recall was tested in a situation similar to Brown and McNeill’s (1966) tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) paradigm. After 50 trials, Ss were unexpectedly asked to recall all the target words. It was found that words retrieved with difficulty in the definition session were relatively well recalled in the final test. Further analyses revealed that the critical factor for good recall was the presence of a TOT state, or a strong feeling of knowing the word, during initial retrieval. An explanation in terms of activation of the word’s attributes was suggested.