Late last year Dagmar Divjak, Hui Sun, and Petar Milin released a Journal of Neurolinguistics paper “Physiological responses and cognitive behaviours: Measures of heart rate variability index language knowledge” whose abstract says:
Building on the relation between language cognition and the nervous system, we examine whether Heart Rate Variability (HRV), a cardiovascular measure that indexes Autonomic Nervous System activity, can be used to assess implicit language knowledge. We test the potential of HRV to detect whether individuals possess grammatical knowledge and explore how sensitive the cardiovascular response is.
41 healthy, British English-speaking adults listened to 40 English speech samples, half of which contained grammatical errors. Thought Technology’s 5-channel ProComp 5 encoder tracked heart rate via a BVP-Flex/Pro sensor attached to the middle finger of the non-dominant hand, at a rate of 2048 samples per second. A Generalised Additive Mixed Effects Model confirmed a cardiovascular response to grammatical violations: there is a statistically significant reduction in HRV as indexed by NN50 in response to stimuli that contain errors. The cardiovascular response reflects the extent of the linguistic violations, and NN50 decreases linearly with an increase in the number of errors, up to a certain level, after which HRV remains constant.
Now see what Nick Morgan Ph.D. did with it in the pages of Psychology Today:
Does grammar matter? And did you have a teacher in your youth who insisted on drumming the rules of good grammar into you—and was that teacher on the stern and grumpy side of the instructional continuum?
My anecdotal research into these questions over the years has gradually built a composite picture of a somewhat terrifying authority figure, either male or female, who insisted on good grammar as the essential basis of a sound education. They managed to impart enough of it to you so that you cringe when someone uses “among” and “between” interchangeably—or flubs the distinction between ‘that” and “which” because of a fatal lack of understanding of the difference between an independent and dependent clause.
Now, a study reveals that your response to those solecisms (and your bad-tempered teacher’s response) is indeed physiological: The grammar of language affects us viscerally.
When we hear bad grammar, our pupils dilate, and our heart rate increases, indicating a fight-or-flight response. Interestingly, we respond more forgivingly when the error-prone speaker talks with an accent, probably because we expect (and forgive) grammatical slips more readily from someone for whom our language is not the primary one.
Why should language be so important that we get stressed out when we hear bad grammar? Because successful communication with other people is potentially a matter of life and death in the prehistoric cave. We need to understand what Grob is saying when he shouts a warning over the din of approaching woolly mammoths or something like that. In those moments, bad or confusing grammar could conceivably kill us.
Ah, popularization! Thanks, Bathrobe!
Because successful communication with other people is potentially a matter of life and death in the prehistoric cave
Good grief. Do people get paid to produce this sort of thing?
Perhaps it’s just the work of a Yottabyte-scale Automated Plagiarist.
The “PhD” reminds me of the observation that if “PhD” appears after the author’s name on the cover of a book, you can be absolutely sure that the arguments in the book are insufficient to support its conclusions.
I too was amused by the ostentatious qualification. And yes, I’m afraid they do get paid, otherwise they’d be doing something more socially productive.
Good grief. Do people get paid to produce this sort of thing?
Yes, it is very tempting. That is the warning sign. You really shouldn’t join the staff of Mammon, not at your age (if I may say so, since mine is close). There your core probity will ultimately be your downfall.
Succumbing to greed is for young folks.
When my daughter wrote a paper for a psychology class, her teacher told her to give her name as “Irene Cowan, A.A.” (associate of arts, a 2-year degree from a community college, where I had sent her to save on tuition fees). Talk about pretentious, but it wasn’t her fault, it was right there in the APA style guide.
I am mystified why DE quoted that sentence when the next one is even more hilarious:
We need to understand what Grob is saying when he shouts a warning over the din of approaching woolly mammoths or something like that. In those moments, bad or confusing grammar could conceivably kill us.
So presumably if Grob said The mammoths be coming! (a fact which would surely be obvious from the din), the members of his group would lose valuable time as they puzzled over his ungrammatical (in standard English) warning, leading them all to perish in the stampede….
Actually, I don’t think Psychology Today is a very reputable source on matters psychological, despite the imposing name.
As for the source in the Journal of Neurolinguistics, that only seems to prove the deleterious effects of grammatical peevery. The fact that it upsets people so much only shows how much damage prescriptivism can cause to otherwise healthy human beings.
I did like this bit:
Thought Technology’s 5-channel ProComp 5 encoder tracked heart rate via a BVP-Flex/Pro sensor attached to the middle finger of the non-dominant hand, at a rate of 2048 samples per second.
On the dominant hand, this is precisely the finger that is likely to be raised when peevers hear “bad grammar”. Is it possible that the 5-channel ProComp 5 encoder’s signal is being influenced by the twitching of the finger?
Mark Liberman covered this:
Those are L2 errors, from a corpus of Polish native speakers using English. Nothing at all to do with the sort of peeves that are taught in school to English native speakers.
You could do a metastudy, showing the Psychology Today article to a group of linguists and measuring their heart rate variability.
heart rate variability index language knowledge
On first, and indeed second reading, I took index to be a noun, in British newspaper headline style, and wondered why the expected verb at the end of the sentence had been left off.
Makes me wonder whether you could come up with a grammar error so horrific that it would trigger a heart attack.
There’s the plot of a murder mystery in there somewhere.
This is evidently the Hard Science behind the phenomenon of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgusted_of_Tunbridge_Wells
It is hardly surprising people have negative physical reactions to bad grammar. It is the same cringe effect that people feel when seeing someone badly dressed, farting at the dinner table or committing any sort of social faux pas. We are social animals and apparently hard wired to have negative emotional responses toward people who violate community standards.
The idea that physical reactions to bad grammar go back to hunting mammoths or whatever makes no sense. Social scientists often seem inclined to ignore status seeking as a fact of human existence, or at least don’t know how to explain it. Seems to me in life and death situations people actually tend to be very forgiving of “bad” grammar. It is precisely when the stakes are lowest that the ability to use language to improve your social status becomes most imperative.
A Google search for “Nick Morgan” finds a Wikipedia page, a Linked In page, a Facebook page, and a Twitter identity. (I would link to them all but for Hat’s spam filter.)
He is president of “Public Words Inc”, whose website describes him thus:
Dr. Nick Morgan is a legend in public speaking, a leading expert in rhetoric and body language and a highly sought after coach. Trusted by some of America’s most influential celebrities and thought leaders, he can help you take your public speaking to a world class level.
Nick has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. Nick has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear on the Today Show, and to deliver unforgettable keynote speeches. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders.
At which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
I’ve noticed that WP often has tart little notes at the top of its articles to the effect that the text reads too much like a plug or advertisement. Curiously, the note seems to have gone missing in this case.
However, it supports my case that “Nick Morgan” is simply an alias for an automated Stochastic Parrot. The picture is obviously computer-generated. It doesn’t look remotely human. It’s plainly the result of somebody asking an “AI” to generate a picture of “an expert in non-verbal communications skills for public speakers” who writes “unforgettable keynote speeches” for plutocrats.
The surprise is that they couldn’t come up with a better name than “Nick Morgan.” I mean, it’s pretty meh, as a name.
I can definitely feel my heartbeat changing when relatives of mine try to lie. It’s quite obvious. It’s a “danger” signal to me, and my heart beat gets up — my family is not very trustworthy. When I’m not in their vicinity, it doesn’t work — I guess it’s attuned to them.
EDIT : I can discern when a member of my family is lying easily. With other people, mostly nothing.
Apparently it’s vitally important to distinguish that and which, but it’s perfectly OK to use dependent/independent when you mean restrictive/nonrestrictive.
unforgettable keynote speeches
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Um … could you just jog my memory about that, JC?
David Eddyshaw : His 2004 speech transformed him, overnight, from an Illinois senator to a prospective presidential candidate.
I have a dim memory of William Hague (the future party leader) giving a speech at the Tory Party conference when Thatcher was leader and he was about twelve. But it was the horror of the spectacle rather than the actual words which has lingered in my mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hague#Early_life_and_education
I think I watched Obama’s speech at the 2004 convention, but I genuinely have no memory of it.
In fact, I seem to have blocked out almost everything from that convention except Kerry’s arrival by boat. After the convention was so focused on the nominee’s history as a war hero, I remember being livid about the subsequent swiftboating* and depressed that Kerry seemed unable to enunciate a compelling case for how his personal military experience would make him the best person to handle the war in Iraq.
* Was that ever some organization’s Word of the Year?
[Hague] it was the horror of the spectacle rather than the actual words which has lingered in my mind.
Me too. We had a similarly precocious pubescent Tory at school debates.
I suspect the lack of school debates is the only reason Sebastian Kurz didn’t stick out even earlier than he did…
[I]t was the horror of the spectacle rather than the actual words which has lingered in my mind.
That sounds eerily like like Marlow’s descriptions of another famous Kurtz.