Gaby
Does improper word usage and punctuation drive you crazy? Relax: you’re not alone.
A team of linguists from the University of Birmingham (UK) was the first to conduct research on the negative reactions triggered by other people’s grammatical mistakes. It turns out these physical reactions occur in the part of our sympathetic nervous system responsible for the “fight or flight” response.
During their study, the researchers found a direct link between poor grammar and heart rate variability (HRV), which measures the change in intervals between heartbeats. These changes are controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which carefully regulates heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, digestion, and other vital functions.
According to the Daily Mail, the intervals between heartbeats typically vary. These intervals become more regular when a person is under stress. In this study, the stressors included text flaws such as incorrect verb tense, poor sentence structure, confusion between singular and plural forms, the use of double negatives, and misplaced commas.
What the Researchers Discovered
For their study, the scientists recruited 41 healthy adult English-speaking Britons aged 18 to 44. None of the participants had learning difficulties or reported any heart-related issues.
The volunteers were provided with 40 text samples to listen to. Half of these contained grammatical errors. The length of the samples varied, as did the number of mistakes they contained. Throughout the exercises, the researchers continuously monitored the cardiovascular activity of the participants. Afterward, the volunteers answered questions, evaluating the text samples.
stress.
According to Dagmar Divjak, a professor and researcher in cognitive linguistics and language cognition, the autonomic nervous system responded to the cognitive demands of the participants.
In a report for the journal Neurolinguistics, the team noted that deviations from linguistic norms triggered a “clear cardiovascular response.” The researchers stated that “this observation revealed a new dimension of the complex relationships between physiology and cognition.” This suggests that “cognitive efforts impact the physiological system more than previously thought.”
