Performance versus Ability: Another Issue Frequently Ignored in Psychiatry Research

In previous posts, I have discussed some bizarre assumptions made in psychiatry research papers when the data is analyzed. I wrote about how, for example, differences in brain area size and functioning between different groups on fMRI scans are automatically interpreted as abnormalities.

Nassir Ghaemi, a blogger on Medscape with whom I have had some strong disagreements about borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, nonetheless had a great quote on this with which I wholeheartedly agree:
             

"All things biological are not disease, even though we can define disease in such a way that all diseases are biological. This matter is obvious once pointed out. A few assumptions,  which seem either patently true or very likely: all human psychological experience is mediated by the brain; each person only has one brain; therefore the brain will always be biologically changing as we have psychological experiences. Reading a blog post about the brain is a psychological experience. Having delusions from schizophrenia is a psychological experience. The first brain change does not reflect disease; the second does. So showing MRI changes with adult ADHD or borderline personality does nothing to demonstrate that those conditions are diseases. If you watch TV and play video games inordinately, you will have changes in your brain, and you might also develop clinical symptoms of ADHD. If you are repeatedly sexually abused, you will have changes in the brain, and you might also develop clinical symptoms of borderline personality. But those changes in the brain do not have the same causal role as the neuronal atrophy that happens with trisomy 21, or with schizophrenia, or bipolar illness..."

Another major nonsensical assumption that litters the psychiatric literature (the literature littering alliteration?) is that one can totally disregard the motivations of research subjects as well their past experiences and the environmental context in which they live when evaluating their performance on psychological tests. 

I mentioned an example of how this is utter nonsense in a previous post: The performance of African-Americans on IQ tests just might be related to the fact that for several generations Blacks who looked too smart were at high risk of being lynched. Do you think they are just as motivated as other folks to want to look smart on an IQ test which is being administered by White researchers?

What I have seen more and more lately, particular in the personality disorders literature, are studies that look at differences between various diagnostic groups on such issues as how much "impulsive aggression" they show, or how and how well they read the emotional state of ambiguous faces of strangers in photographs. When differences are found, once again the "lower" performing groups are just assumed to be "impaired" or "abnormal."

This, of course, confuses performance with ability. Without knowing anything about what the subjects in the experiments are motivated to do in their daily lives on any particular dimension for whatever reason, or what environmental contingencies they are worried about that may relate to the task at hand, it is literally impossible to say for sure whether any difference in their performance is related to what they would be able to do if those other issues were not operative.

Patients with borderline personality disorder, for example, grow up in families in which double messages are flying in all directions, and with parents who can switch from being over-involved to neglectful at the drop of hat. They are bound to have a higher index of suspicion about what facial expressions on strangers might mean than someone who grew up in a more consistent and predictable environment. If they did not, they would be morons.

Another major issue ignored in the literature is the difference between a research subject's real self versus their persona or false self in certain social situations. We all present different "faces" to the outside world depending on social context. Researchers who do not consider this must think that men, for example, present themselves exactly the same way around their children, their bosses, and their mistresses. Really?

With personality disorders, as I described in several previous posts, people play social roles designed to stabilize family homeostasis. These roles are merely a much more pervasive version of the different roles played by the above "normal" man interacting with different people. So someone with antisocial tendencies, for example, which are part of the role of avenger, are motivated to show more impulsive aggression than other people - on purpose - and have literally trained themselves to be like that. They do so habitually, automatically, and without thinking. Of course they will show more impulsive aggression in the experiment! Why wouldn't they? 

In fact, showing a lot of impulsive aggression might be considered to be part of the definition of antisocial behavior. The experiments therefore do nothing more than prove that anti-social people act habitually in an anti-social manner. Like, duh!

These types of results in no way indicate any "deficits," "deficiencies," or "abnormalities." One wonders how people who make these ludicrous assumptions ever manage to get through medical or graduate school.