The memory unit within kana letter and kanji letter words in the tip of the tongue phenomena
Murakami, Y.
Japanese Journal of Psychology 51(1): 41-44
1980
Document Number: 347056
Definitions of 20 words represented by kana-letters (Japanese alphabet) and Chinese characters were read to 300 students. In all, 222 partial reports were treated as in the tip-of-the-tongue stage and analyzed by Rubin's method. The major clusters were composed of 1-3 kana-letters, or 1-letter Chinese characters. These results partially support the Rubin's conclusion, but the possibility was suggested that the memory unit for the Japanese word is not the morpheme, but the pseudo-letter morpheme.