Most people have had the “tip of the tongue” experience when trying to remember a name or word: there is a feeling of knowing, but the knowledge is not consciously available. Sometime later, when engaged in some other, different activity, the name may suddenly pop into the conscious mind. The way by which people retrieve the needed knowledge is still unknown, but probably involves some form of pattern-matching mechanism coupled with a confirmatory process that checks for consistency with the required knowledge. This is why when you search for a name but continually retrieve the wrong name, you
...more
