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
Association
for Psychological
Science.