Word on the Tip of Your Tongue? Study Suggests You’re Better Off Looking Up the Answer

This goes along with one of my rules to avoid studying vocabulary words that I repeatedly confuse with another word.

“The longer they stayed in that tip-of-the-tongue state on the first day, the more likely they were to get into a tip-of-the-tongue state on that word on the second day,” explains Humphreys. The extra time that people spend trying to dredge up the word is what the researchers describe as “incorrect practice” time. Instead of learning the correct word, people are learning the mistake itself.