[psysec] Psychological basis for selective failure to recall passwords?

[Peter Gutmann]

The subject is a bit generic, what I'm interested in specifically is the
phenomenon in which users can't recall the password for the current site or
machine but can recall lots of other passwords and try all of those in turn to
see if one fits.  It seems to be a mixture of a failure of cued recall and
interference, with some tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) thrown in for good measure,
but that's just groping around in a bunch of potentially applicable phenomena.
Does anyone know of any research that's directly applicable?

Peter.