or personalized thing, such as a pet, and is most commonly used for male direct objects. The opposite phenomenon also occurs in the same regions of Spain and is known as loísmo or laísmo. In loísmo, the direct object pronouns lo and los are used in contexts where the indirect object pronouns le and les would normally be prescribed; this usually occurs with a male indirect object. In laísmo, la and las are used instead of le and les when referring to a female indirect object. Verb tenses for past events In a broad sense, when expressing an action viewed as finished in the past, speakers (and writers) in most of Spain use the perfect tense—e.g. he llegado *'I have arrived')—more often than their American counterparts, while Spanish-speakers in the Americas more often use the preterite (llegué 'I arrived'). The perfect is also called the "present perfect" and, in Spanish, pasado perfecto or pretérito perfecto compuesto. It is described as a "compound" tense (compuesto in Spanish) because it is formed with the auxiliary verb haber plus a main verb. The preterite, also called the "simple past" and, in Spanish, pretérito indefinido or pretérito perfecto simple, is considered a "simple" tense because it is formed of a single word: the verb stem with an inflectional ending for person, number, etc. The choice between preterite and perfect, according to prescriptive grammars from both Spain and the Americas, is based on the psychological time frame—whether expressed or merely implied—in which the past action is embedded. If that time frame includes the present moment (i.e. if the speaker views the past action as somehow related to the moment of speaking), then the recommended tense is the perfect (he llegado). But if the time frame does not include the present—if the speaker views the action as only in the past, with little or no relation to the moment of speaking—then the recommended tense is the preterite (llegué). This is also the real spontaneous usage in most of Spain. Following this criterion, an explicit time frame such as hoy ('today') or este año ('this year') includes the present and thus dictates the compound tense: Este año he cantado ('I have sung this year'). Conversely, a time frame such as ayer ('yesterday') or la semana pasada ('last week') does not include the present and therefore calls for the preterite: La semana pasada canté ('I sang last week').