This might have a little more to do with psychology than language, but I thought that people who read this board might be interested in this might be of interest to people who read this board:
http://www.physorg.com/news155938509.html
"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, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists William Hart of the University of Florida and Dolores Albarracà 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."
I find the result surprising. Intuitively, I expect that perfect aspect has more punch. So the fact that imperfect aspect stimulates memory might just change the way I speak and write. I'll have to try an informal experiment.