Cognitive

Question 1

What does the cognitive explanation focus on?

Answer 1

The role of mental processes.

Schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing.

Question 2

Impaired thought processes in schizophrenics:

Answer 2

• it is thought that these filtering and processing systems are defective in the brains of people with schizophrenia and they become overwhelmed with sensory information they are unable to interpret.
• idea supported by the finding that schizophrenics perform poorly on various information processing tasks such as reaction times, visual tracking, short term memory, size estimation and categorisation

BUT cognitive theories simply describe symptoms in cognitive terms rather than explaining how symptoms originate.

Question 3

How do they explain the cause of these cognitive deficits?

Answer 3

• they assume underlying physiological abnormalities

- models that integrate neurological and cognitive explanations is called neuropsychological

Question 4

Frith Neuropsychological:

How does he believe delusions are experienced?

Answer 4

-he suggested that people with schizophrenia cannot distinguish between actions that are driven by external forces and those driven by internal intention.

• conscious processing is where the highest level of cognitive functioning takes place in full subjective awareness
• we have limited capacity to deal with such high-order processes and that means we can usually only carry out these tasks one at a time.
• in contrast, pre-conscious processes occur without awareness. They are automatic and many operations can be performed simultaneously.
• if the filter between the two types of processing breaks down, inconsequential information could be passed into conscious awareness.
• because it is usually only important information that arrives into conscious awareness, this unimportant information is misinterpreted and seen as something significant that needs to be acted on.

Question 5

Frith explanation of auditory hallucinations:

Answer 5

• we are bombarded with sounds, both verbal and non verbal, and it’s likely the pre-conscious mechanisms test various hypotheses before the final interpretation is passed to conscious awareness.
• if the filter is defective, it is possible that flawed early interpretations of non speech sounds as speech, deep into consciousness and are experienced as voices.

Question 6

What does Frith believe is the cause for this fault filter between the conscious and pre-conscious?

Answer 6

It’s underpinned by an irregularity of the neuronal pathways connecting to the hippocampus to the prefrontal cortex; which is linked to faulty regulation of dopamine in this part of the brain.

Question 7

Frith evaluation:

Answer 7

• provided evidence for this hypothesis by demonstrating changed in cerebral blood flow in the brains of people with schizophrenia, while engaged on specific cognitive tasks.
• criticised for not taking sufficient account of environmental factors.
• the cognitive model simply described the symptoms in terms of cognitive processes
• it does not explain where these deficits come from, so it’s not a complete model of the disorder.

Question 8

AO3 Meyer and Lindenberg support for cognitive explanation:

Answer 8

-they found a link between excess dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, and the state of the working memory.
This suggests there is a scientifically proven link between faulty processing and high dopamine levels, supporting the biological and cognitive explanations.

-Frith’s theory for schizophrenia is not solely cognitive, so it has to be argued that to explain schizophrenia you have to explain it through both cognitive and biological theories.

Question 9

Diathesis-stress model:

Answer 9

An integrative approach towards schizophrenia that acknowledges the contribution of a number of different factors to its origin.

Helps in drawing together biological and psychological factors.

It also has implications for therapy suggesting that the treatment programmes should combine a variety of biological, behavioural and family interventions.

This is because it’s a complex disorder and it’s unlikely that a single cause will be identified.

Question 10

Zubin and Spring:

Answer 10

First to put forward the idea that stressful life events could trigger psychotic symptoms in individuals with an underlying biological predisposition to schizophrenia.

Question 11

Diathesis-stress model explanation:

Answer 11

• Genetic factors or adverse conditions in the womb can lead to a biological vulnerability and this can take the form of biochemical or neuroanatomical abnormalities.
• the biological vulnerability can lead to psychological vulnerability such as inability to process information appropriately.
• these cognitive processing deficits, in turn can lead to cognitive distortions, misattributions and hyper-arousal.
• if individual is exposed to stressful life events, a family environment that is high EE or an environment which is over-stimulating, these cognitive difficulties become exacerbated and go on to produce some of the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia eg. delusions and hallucinations.
• BUT, individual is unlikely to experience psychotic episodes if he or she had developed good coping skills and lives within a warm, supportive family with good social support.