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psychologically speaking with me Leela Ainge.

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Welcome to Psychologically Speaking with me, Leila Ainge.

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This season we're diving into that space between intention and action, a liminal space.

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Today I have a question for you.

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Well, two actually.

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How often do you understand what you read?

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And also, when do you shortcut your curiosity?

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Psych at the Mic for the British Psychological Society is one of my volunteer roles and

this is where we bring a speaker to talk about an area of their psychology research, to

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talk to psychologists, non-psychologists, students, researchers in the East Midlands.

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I absolutely love hosting these events because there's something really interesting to

learn.

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And last month

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in Nottingham was no exception because we explored the psychology of reading in schools.

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Now, educational psychology isn't an area of research interest for me, but I am a parent

and one conversation that really struck with me was about word retrieval and

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comprehension.

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It made me reflect on my own reading habits.

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And how often do I skim unfamiliar words in academic texts?

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It's a lot.

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And I often rely on context to get the gist without ever fully really learning long

complicated words.

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Lately though, I've been challenging myself to pause and actually look up words because of

this Psych at the Mic event.

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Language shouldn't be a gatekeeper of knowledge and curiosity and that's something I'm

really passionate about.

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But I'll admit that before I started stopping and looking upwards, I thought that the use

of complicated words was pompous.

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And I think I've had a bit of a realisation that the word that I learnt last weekend is

helping me to appreciate the beauty of the right word for the right occasion.

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And so this is what I need to admit.

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I need to keep on learning.

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So let me introduce you to the word that came into my periphery a few weeks ago.

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It's the word lacuna.

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Now, you might know this word, but I didn't.

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And if you studied Latin, which you might have done, you might also know that it comes

from the word lacus.

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I don't know if I pronounced that right, but it means a ditch or a pit.

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So in academic writing, the word lacuna signals a

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in knowledge and so it's a metaphor I suppose and have you come across this word before

because I was sure that I actually hadn't I thought I've never seen this word before and

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my annoyance was really that it popped up in the first paragraph of a paper and my heart

actually drops a little bit when that happens because I think no this paper's gonna be

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littered with words I don't know and

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I automatically think, God, this is going to be hard work.

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It might take me ages to read this, but my curiosity didn't stop there this time because

I'm doing this little challenge and I'm trying to look at words.

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So I did a control F and search on four of my favourite academic papers.

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And these are papers that I actually find quite easy to read.

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And I've kept a note of these because actually when I write my PhD, I want to write in a

similar kind of way, which is

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I can understand what is being said, even if I'm not an expert in that area and the

language just flows.

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So they're good examples of writing that are academic, but seem achievable to me.

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And guess what?

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Lacuna was actually in one of them.

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And this is a paper.

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It's about scaffolding liminality and entrepreneurs.

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And it's a paper that I have read so many times because I just love the content of it.

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the context of women entrepreneurs and how we are sitting in between spaces really

resonates with me.

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So this is a paper that I can tell you about in quite a lot of detail.

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I've read it plenty of times.

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I thought I'd really understood it, but this word lacuna actually appears in the paper and

I've skimmed over that word and I know what I've done.

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I've done what children do when they're reading a text and they don't understand the word.

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because our brain allows us to jump and make conclusions about what we think we're

reading.

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And this was the topic of the Psych at the Mic event really.

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It was telling us about why peer reading with somebody and questioning what we're reading

can really help children with comprehension.

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So just like those kids in schools, when they're left to read on their own, if we're not

encouraged to think about the meaning of a specific word or talk or would be called

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complacent, then we fill in our own gaps.

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And this is brilliant.

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mean, our brains are designed to do that every day.

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We make loads of heuristic shortcuts because we couldn't possibly.

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keep every little bit of information in our heads.

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We couldn't process every piece of information that's put in front of us every single day.

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But some shortcuts are more helpful than others and I am in a learning space right now.

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So maybe I need to mind the gaps in my own knowledge a little bit more.

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And the value of that word isn't that I'm going to be really glad of it next time I'm

writing something and I want to sound clever.

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But for me, I think it'll be more practical when I've got a really tight word count and I

need a single word that conveys there's a bit of a gap in the literature here.

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So as a parent, I also get to read some

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really wildly and funny kid book, funny kids books with my nine-year-old and he actually

has a bigger vocabulary than I do and I don't know where he gets that from.

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He loves language, he likes using big words and describing things and I love that for him.

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But I'll admit there's sometimes words in his books that I don't understand and he doesn't

understand and there's something quite humbling and magical about learning how to read

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even as an adult.

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So that psych at the mic event was all about pairing children up to read and also getting

them to think about the words that they don't know.

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So perhaps I need to take that advice into my weekly PhD sessions with my reading group

and fess up when I don't know something exactly.

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There's a real vulnerability in that, isn't there, as an adult where I think we sit in

this liminal space, this space in between where we need to be confident to...

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go into a situation we're not certain of and carry on regardless.

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And also we need to be vulnerable enough to go, oh, I don't know what that means.

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Can you tell me?

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And I'm always stuck between those two places, especially in my work.

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In an average day, I could be helping or mentoring somebody else through a project and my

confidence and assurance helps them.

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And then there'll also be events where I'm just

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thrown into something at the last minute and I might not understand everything but I'm

there to facilitate.

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So I've become quite adept at just going along with things and I think this is something

I've had to recognise in my research journey that will trip me up if I don't just

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recognise that that is a brilliant and valuable skill in my professional life but perhaps

in my...

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academic, early academic career, that is something I'm going to have to pay attention to

but have fun with it at the same time.

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So it did make me think about this season's podcast theme because as we get older, our

risk appetite is known to shrink a bit and we second guess.

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We sit with things longer because perhaps we're careful and considered.

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We've got more life experience to draw upon to say, is this a good idea or a bad idea?

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And perhaps sometimes that gap between knowing and doing feels like, I don't know, a bit

of a chasm, either...

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You know, we're second guessing things and not spending the time or spending far too long

in this space in between.

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So psychologically that tendency to stay safe and although it's really well documented, we

know the research says that there's a loss aversion our brain prioritizes at this point.

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It's a desire to avoid a negative outcome basically.

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So we're looking at things more strongly than seeking the gains that it can bring.

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And one study actually found that older adults are more likely to focus on avoiding losses

than pursuing rewards.

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So a shift that links to changes in emotional regulation and motivation.

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But actually the more I avoid looking up words that will fit perfectly in a specific

scenario.

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I'm going to lose gains in my ability to write at that academic level succinctly and

within a word count and I'll potentially lose out on opportunities to get my work

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published.

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But there's something that I suppose that's really starting to make sense to me now is

that, yes, I can hold two views at the same time.

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I can say that academic writing shouldn't be a gatekeeper, it shouldn't be difficult to

read.

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I can also see the value in academic writing that uses the right word for the right

situation and is concise.

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Perhaps I'll always be one of those people that writes or talks for everyone and yes I'll

have to produce PhD and academic worthy writing but I also want to be able to explain

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things in a really common sense way.

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So this idea that as adults we're focusing on avoiding loss rather than pursuing the

reward is actually called socio-emotional selective theory.

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I'm going to have to look up that a little bit more.

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It's first time I've come across that theory.

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But I thought I'd mention it today.

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And it's the idea that as we age, we just become more selective about what we invest our

energy and what we're more focused on.

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and perhaps that we're more focused on emotionally meaningful goals.

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And it links into last week's podcast.

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If you listen to that, I was talking about my realization that I'd been saying yes, far

too much to volunteer work.

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And perhaps I was investing my emotion and time into the wrong things.

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So maybe pausing.

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look up a word isn't just about vocabulary, maybe it's a tiny act of curiosity against

certainty in a way for me to stay open to something new.

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Even part of us, I think when we want to retreat into what we already know, or is familiar

to stay safe.

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Definitely my encyclopedic brain seems to have prioritised random facts over learning five

different ways to say mind the gap, but I'm still mildly

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annoyed about fancy words that slow me down.

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I probably always will be, but I'm working on it and I'll admit that I can see the joy.

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But how about you?

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Any new words lately?

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Do you love words?

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you somebody who's got a big vocabulary?

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Are there any moments where you've caught yourself sitting between a space of knowing and

doing?

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I'd just love to know.

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And obviously a reminder that my last podcast was a bit of a confession.

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I'd been saying yes to a lot and things like that Psych at the Mic event.

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I absolutely love doing them, but perhaps it's not me that needs to organise them every

time.

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Thanks for listening today, just a short one for me and I hope you have a wonderful

weekend.

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I'll be back next week with the final episode of seasons two.

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I can't quite believe we're nearly at episode 12 of this season already, it's gone so

quickly.