DD: Interesting article re verb usage from Psychology;

ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2009) ­ If you want to 
perform at your peak, you should carefully 
consider how you discuss your past actions. In a 
new study in Psychological Science, psychologists 
William Hart of the University of Florida and 
Dolores Albarraca n from the University of 
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reveal that the way 
a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the 
verbs are used), affects our memory of an event 
being described and may also influence our behavior.

In these experiments, a group of volunteers were 
interrupted prior to finishing a word game and 
were then asked to describe their behavior using 
the imperfective (e.g., I was solving word 
puzzles) or perfective (e.g., I solved word 
puzzles) aspect. The volunteers then completed a 
memory test (for the word game) or a word game 
which was similar to the first one they had worked on.

It turns out, the volunteers who had described 
their behavior using the imperfective aspect were 
able to recall more specific details of their 
experience compared to volunteers who had 
described their behavior in the perfective 
aspect. The volunteers writing in the 
imperfective aspect also performed better on the 
second word game and were more willing to 
complete the task than did volunteers who used 
the perfective to describe their experience.

The authors surmise that when we think about our 
past behavior in the imperfective (e.g. what we 
were doing), we tend to imagine that behavior as 
ongoing (and not completed yet). This enables us 
to easily think about what went into that 
behavior and may help us improve performance on similar tasks in the future.

The authors note that these findings may be 
relevant to behavioral therapy. They suggest that 
"decreasing the frequency of unhealthy behaviors 
might be facilitated by discussing these 
behaviors in terms of what I did. In contrast, 
increasing the frequency of healthy behaviors 
might be facilitated by discussing these 
behaviors in terms of what I was doing."

----------
Journal reference:
    * . What I Was Doing Versus What I Did. Psychological Science, (in press)
Adapted from materials provided by 
<http://www.psychologicalscience.org>Association<http://www.psychologicalscience.org> 
for Psychological Science.

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