# Tip of the Tongue Known-Item Retrieval: A Case Study in Movie Identification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07124 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07124/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jan 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

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- [Browsing Lost Unformed Recollections: A Benchmark for Tip-of-the-Tongue Search and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19193/) (2025)
- [Benchmarking Information Retrieval Models on Complex Retrieval Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07253/) (2025)
- [Tip of the Tongue Query Elicitation for Simulated Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17776/) (2025)
- [Would You Ask it that Way? Measuring and Improving Question Naturalness for Knowledge Graph Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12768/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Memorability Modeling from Tip-of-the-Tongue Retrieval Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20854/) (2025)
- [DETOUR: An Interactive Benchmark for Dual-Agent Search and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00352/) (2026)
- [Multilingual and Domain-Agnostic Tip-of-the-Tongue Query Generation for Simulated Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.21096/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While current information retrieval systems are effective for known-item retrieval where the searcher provides a precise name or identifier for the item being sought, systems tend to be much less effective for cases where the searcher is unable to express a precise name or identifier. We refer to this as tip of the tongue (TOT) known-item retrieval, named after the cognitive state of not being able to retrieve an item from memory. Using movie search as a case study, we explore the characteristics of questions posed by searchers in TOT states in a community question answering website. We analyze how searchers express their information needs during TOT states in the movie domain. Specifically, what information do searchers remember about the item being sought and how do they convey this information? Our results suggest that searchers use a combination of information about: (1) the content of the item sought, (2) the context in which they previously engaged with the item, and (3) previous attempts to find the item using other resources (e.g., search engines). Additionally, searchers convey information by sometimes expressing uncertainty (i.e., hedging), opinions, emotions, and by performing relative (vs. absolute) comparisons with attributes of the item. As a result of our analysis, we believe that searchers in TOT states may require specialized query understanding methods or document representations. Finally, our preliminary retrieval experiments show the impact of each information type presented in information requests on retrieval performance.