Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We study speech production difficulties in speakers with dementing illnesses by inducing tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. W e found that dementing speakers experienced TOTs but were unable to supply any information about the target, unlike an age-matched control group. W e distinguish between items generated by the subjects as relatives of the targets, subjects' own target words, and what we call "constructive search" words that subjects use in their search for the target. When related words came to mind, they were almost all semantic relatives of the target, whereas in nondementing adults, phonological relatives are also reported. W e interpret the results in terms of a three level interactive account of lexicalization. W e propose that the retrieval deficit in dementia occurs in the first stage of lexicalization, that of retrieving abstract lexical forms from a semantic specification, rather than in a second stage of retrieving phonological forms.