Syntactic Class 1 Running Head: SYNTACTIC CLASS AND PHONOLOGICAL PRIMING OF TOTS Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 1018-1023 Syntactic Class Influences Phonological Priming of Tip-of-The-Tongue Resolution

When having tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences, phonologically related words have both facilitated and impeded word retrieval. This experiment examined whether phonologically related words’ syntactic class (part of speech) is responsible for these differential effects. Sixty college students saw general knowledge questions whose answers were designated target words and responded “know”, “don’t know”, or “TOT”. Following “TOT” and “don’t know” responses, participants saw five words, one of which was a prime. Primes contained the target’s first syllable and either shared or did not share the target’s part of speech. Following presentation of the primes, retrieval of the target was attempted again. Different part-of-speech primes facilitated resolution of TOTs, whereas same part-of-speech primes had no effect, relative to phonologically unrelated words. These results support Node Structure Theory’s most-primed-wins principle and the Transmission Deficit model account of TOTs and detail the importance of syntactic class in selecting words that are candidates for speech production.