South African Psychiatry - November 2018

CULINARY CORNER
RESEARCH AS A SOCIAL PROCESS
P-hackers and other statistical cheats are not the
only people hampering the development of science.
Another problem relates to the social context in
which research finds are disseminated.
REFRESHER
AUTISTIC FEMALES ARE DIFFERENT
TO AUTISTIC MALES
Daniel Kahneman, the author of the well-received
book “Thinking Fast and Slow” (2011), argued that
the concept of loss aversion was the most significant
contribution to the psychology of behavioural
economics. Not so, argues David Gal (2018), a
professor of marketing at the University of Illinois
at Chicago. He, together with Derek Rucker of
Northwestern University carried out a critical review
of loss aversion and concluded that there is, in fact,
no global loss aversion bias.
Contexts in which people are motivated by a fear of
loss are associated with rational thought processes,
as are contexts where people are not motivated by
a fear of loss. These incidents are associated with
specific explanations rather than with an inborn
cognitive tendency.
FOR EXAMPLE, MESSAGES THAT FRAME
AN APPEAL IN TERMS OF LOSS ARE NO
MORE PERSUASIVE THAN MESSAGES THAT
FRAME AN APPEAL IN TERMS OF GAIN.
In his essay, “Why the Most Important Idea in
Behavioural Decision Making is a Fallacy” Gal
(2018) goes on explain why a belief in loss aversion
has persisted so strongly. He notes that science is a
social process in which advocates of a theory need
to convince other scientists by means of logic and
argument that the evidence is best explained by
that particular theory.
ONCE MANY PEOPLE ARE CONVINCED,
THE INCUMBENT THEORY IS
ADVANTAGED OVER CHALLENGES TO
IT. GAL (2018) POINTS OUT THAT THE
STATUS QUO IS MAINTAINED THROUGH
CONFIRMATION BIAS, SOCIAL PROOF,
IDEOLOGICAL COMPLACENCY, AND THE
VESTED INTERESTS OF SCIENTISTS WHOSE
REPUTATIONS ARE CONNECTED TO
EXISTING THEORIES. IN THE CASE OF LOSS
AVERSION, CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE
HAD BEEN IGNORED, DISMISSED
OR EXPLAINED AWAY. FURTHERMORE,
AMBIGUOUS EVIDENCE HAD TENDED TO
BE INTERPRETED AS CONFIRMING LOSS
AVERSION.
Gal (2018) concludes that one should be neither
too accepting in relation to institutional consensus of
theories nor too wary of criticising accepted beliefs.
Of late there has been much criticising of accepted
beliefs in autism studies. The challenged wisdom has
been that autism is found in boys more than girls
and that when it is found in girls it is very severe.
However it is emerging that many females who are
less extremely based on the spectrum are often
not diagnosed because they present differently
(Szalavitz, 2016). Behavioural and neuroimaging
studies suggest that females with autism are closer
to developing males in their social abilities than
typical girls or boys with autism.
Autistic girls show more of a desire to connect, they
exhibit less repetitive behaviour than boys, their
preferences and pastimes are more similar to other
girls and, unlike their male counterparts, they may
indulge in pretence play. Their tendency towards
rigidity, focus on detail and distress with change
may lead them to be misdiagnosed as suffering
from obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit
disorder or anorexia nervosa (Szalavitz, 2016).
AUTISM AND ANOREXIA NERVOSA
Individuals with anorexia nervosa and those
with an autism spectrum condition both exhibit
perfectionism, a preference for symmetry and
exactness, obsessiveness, impaired social cognition
and social skills. Preliminary studies have suggested
that in both disorders there is decreased neural
activity in the superior temporal cortex and temperoparietal
junction (involved with social cognition and
social skills), as well as a decrease in grey matter in
the temporal lobes (Bjornsdotter et al, 2018).
Bjornsdotter et al (2018) investigated whether there
was less grey matter in areas associated with a
theory of mind in anorexic girls aged 16 to 25 who
presented also with autistic traits. It emerged that
elevated autistic traits in young women with anorexia
nervosa were indeed associated with morphometric
alterations of brain areas linked to social cognition.
SOUTH AFRICAN PSYCHIATRY ISSUE 17 2018 * 61