Socially Shared Feelings of Imminent Recall: More Tip-of-the-Tongue States Are Experienced in Small Groups

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states are typically defined as feelings of imminent recall for known, but temporarily inaccessible target words. However, TOTs are not merely instances of retrieval failures. Clues that increase the subjective likelihood of retrieval success, such as cue familiarity and target-related information, also have been shown to elicit feelings of imminent recall, supporting a metacognitive, inferential etiology of the TOT phenomenon. A survey conducted on our university campus provided anecdotal evidence that TOTs are occasionally shared among people in small groups. Although shared TOTs may suggest the influence of social contagion, we hypothesized that metacognitive appraisal of group recall efficiency could be involved. There should be more instances of remembering in several heads than in one. From this, we conjectured that people remembering together entertain the inference that successful retrieval is more likely in group recall than in a single-person recall situation. Such a metacognitive appraisal may drive a stronger feeling of closeness with the target word and of recall imminence, precipitating one (or more people) into a TOT state. We used general knowledge questions to elicit TOTs. We found that participants reported more TOTs when remembering in small groups than participants remembering alone. Critically, the experimental manipulation selectively increased TOTs without affecting correct recall, suggesting that additional TOTs observed in small groups were triggered independently from the retrieval process. Near one third (31%) of the TOTs in small groups were reported by two or more participants for the same items. However, removing common TOTs from the analyses did not change the basic pattern of results, suggesting that social contagion was not the main factor involved in the observed effect. We argue that beyond social contagion, group recall magnifies the inference that target words will be successfully retrieved, prompting the metacognitive monitoring system to launch more near-retrieval success “warning” (TOT) signals than in a single-person recall situation.

Three approaches to measuring recall on the Web: a systematic review

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a review on the use of the recall metric for evaluating information retrieval systems, especially search engines. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates different researchers’ views about recall metrics. Findings Five different definitions for recall were identified. For the first group, recall refers to completeness, but it does not specify where all the relevant documents are located. For the second group, recall refers to retrieving all the relevant documents from the collection. However, it seems that the term “collection” is ambiguous. For the third group (first approach), collection means the index of search engines and, for the fourth group (second approach), collection refers to the Web. For the fifth group (third approach), ranking of the retrieved documents should also be accounted for in calculating recall. Practical implications It can be said that in the first, second and third approaches, the components of the retrieval algorithm, the retrieval algorithm and crawler, and the retrieval algorithm and crawler and ranker, respectively, are evaluated. To determine the effectiveness of search engines for the use of users, it is better to use the third approach in recall measurement. Originality/value The value of this paper is to collect, identify and analyse literature that is used in recall. In addition, different views of researchers about recall are identified.

Inhibitory Process of Collaborative Inhibition: Assessment Using an Emotional Stroop Task

This study investigated the inhibitory process of collaborative inhibition. An emotional Stroop task was manipulated three times after a group-recall task across three experiments. The results showed that, when participants performed an emotional Stroop task immediately after a group-recall task (Experiment 1) or between two subsequent individual-recall tasks after a group-recall task (Experiment 3), they were able to discriminate color information relating to studied but nonrecalled emotional stimuli more rapidly in the collaborative-recall condition than in the nominal-recall condition. This indicated that participants experienced a stronger inhibition effect in the former condition. However, when the emotional Stroop task was performed after the final individual-recall task (Experiment 2), there were no differences in discrimination between the conditions. These results suggest that the inhibition effect occurs immediately after the group-recall phase and lasts until the final individual-recall task is completed (4 minutes or longer in Experiment 3). It is therefore possible to discuss retrieval inhibition as an underlying mechanism of collaborative inhibition.