What Makes People Better at Retrieving Difficult Words?
Phase: NA
Conditions: Healthy Aging
Sponsor: University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Cover Page for Study Protocol Document 
Official Study Title: What makes people better at retrieving difficult words? 
NCT05066750 
Document Date 2/11/24 
 
 

Protection of Human Subjects 
 
1. Risks to Human Subjects 
a. Human Subjects Involvement, Characteristics, and Design: This experiment will involve young 
and older adult participants. All participants will be prohibited from making hand gestures, a 
constraint shown to increase the difficulty of word retrieval. Then participants will be given a 
brief mindfulness exercise or control procedure, following which they will be given a definition-
naming task. Participants’ responses, including tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences, will be 
recorded while they name the words that fit definitions. Approximately 100 young and 100 
older participants (50 from each age group in each study condition) will be tested to obtain the 
desired power after eliminating unusable data (due to equipment malfunctions, participant 
drop-out, failure to pass the cognitive screen, etc.). 
 
b. Study Procedures, Materials, and Potential Risks: This experiment will employ gesture 
restriction procedures prior to administering the mindfulness exercise. We will measure 
physiological indices (heart rate and skin conductance). Electrodes will be placed on 
participants’ palms, and participants will be told to hold still so as not to dislodge them. This 
procedure will increase the difficulty of the subsequent naming task. Participants assigned to 
the mindfulness intervention condition will listen to a 10-minute guided meditation 
presentation. The presentation instructs participants to engage in breathing exercises, and 
includes music intended to be calming, with binaural beats. Participants in the control condition 
will be deceived by the experimenter that equipment has been left elsewhere and told the 
experimenter must go retrieve it. The experimenter will leave the participant in the room for 10 
minutes, the same time required for the mindfulness exercise. This control condition leaves the 
participant to wonder what is happening and engage in naturalistic mind wandering. After the 
delay, the experimenter will return and say the equipment could not be located. The word 
retrieval task will consist of definitions for 60 low-frequency target words selected to have 
induced high rates of TOTs in my previous research. Participants will type the answer they 
retrieve, the letter T when they have a TOT, or D when they do not know the answer. Percent of 
trials with correct responses and TOTs will be collected. There are minimal risks involved in 
participation. Some people may find the tasks difficult and may experience frustration or 
concern. The experiment involves slight deception in that participants will not be told that they 
are in a control condition when they are left alone in the room, and also not told the true 
purpose of having them not gesture. These deceptions will be thoroughly addressed in the 
debriefing. Healthy older adults do not constitute a vulnerable population, and are at no 
greater risk due to this minimal deception than younger adults. 
 
2. Adequacy of Protection Against Risks 
a. Informed Consent and Assent: Young participants will see a description of the study on the 
SONA system, and older participants will be contacted over email or by phone and told that the 
study is about how people produce words aloud and requires 1 hour to complete. If they agree, 
they will come to the testing site and be given a consent form to read and sign. 
b. Protections Against Risk: If a participant becomes upset or concerned regarding his or her 
naming performance, reassurance will be given that the task is designed to be difficult. 

Participants will be reminded that they have the right to discontinue participation without 
penalty if they feel uncomfortable. Participants will also be told that they may decline having 
their data included in the final report if they so choose. The consent form will let participants 
know that hard copy data will be kept in a file cabinet in a locked office and electronic data files 
will be kept on password-protected computers. Any information obtained in this study that can 
be connected to participants will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with the 
participant’s written permission or as required by law. Participant information will be kept 
separately from data, in a secure location. Participant information and data will be linked only 
by a meaningless participant identification code. Only Dr. James and her research assistants will 
have access to raw or coded data. 
 
3. Potential Benefits of the Proposed Research to Research Participants and Others: All 
participants will be given information on the normal cognitive changes to be expected in older 
adulthood, particularly regarding the increased difficulty of word retrieval. They will also learn 
about how anxiety and mindfulness may affect cognitive processes. There are no other direct 
benefits available to subjects. The minimal risks encountered by participants are outweighed by 
these benefits. 
 
4. Importance of the Knowledge to be Gained: The proposed research will lead to increased 
understanding of the cognitive changes that accompany healthy aging. The studies address 
word retrieval, a topic about which older adults have expressed great concern. Further, the 
mindfulness manipulation may suggest practical strategies for improving word retrieval in 
young and older adulthood.