Cognitive dysfunction

Question 1

What is research evidence for cognitive dysfunction?

Answer 1

Reviews by O’Carroll and Bowie and Harvey

Question 2

What did reviews find?

Answer 2

A majority of schizophrenics have cognitive deficits across a range of functions, such as working memory, attention and verbal learning

Question 3

What does research evidence show?

Answer 3

Deficits don’t cause schizophrenia, they are only associated and only correlational

Question 4

What are cognitive explanations of schizophrenia?

Answer 4

Central control system and meta-representation

Question 5

What is the central control system explanation?

Answer 5

It is responsible for suppressing automatic thoughts and is dysfunctional, which causes thought disorder

Question 6

What is research evidence for central control system?

Answer 6

Stirling

Question 7

What is Stirling’s study?

Answer 7

Schizphrenics performed the Stroop task, where you have to identify the colour of the word, when the word is a different colour

Question 8

What were Stirling’s findings?

Answer 8

Schizophrenics took 2x as long than non-schizophrenics

Question 9

What is the explanation for central control system?

Answer 9

The stroop task is hard, and automatic processing of the word note refers with the ability to identify the colour, and success requires you to repress this, which is made harder by thought disorder

Question 10

What is meta-representation?

Answer 10

Thoughts about our thoughts

Question 11

How is meta-representation a cognitive explanation?

Answer 11

We represent the world in our thoughts, and need the ability to reflect on an identify own thoughts as your own

Question 12

What does meta-representation explain?

Answer 12

Positive symptoms, such as hallucinations

Question 13

What is the cause of hallucinations?

Answer 13

Schizophrenics don’t recognise their own thoughts as their own, so perceiving the voice as having an external source

Question 14

What is evidence for metarepresentation?

Answer 14

Be tall

Question 15

What was Bentall’s study?

Answer 15

Participants came up with own examples within a category and experimenter told them other examples. they were then tested a week later on who came up with each example

Question 16

What were Bentall’s findings?

Answer 16

Schizophrenics with hallucinations performed worse than non-schizophrenics and schizophrenics without hallucinations

Question 17

How will avolition affect performance on Stroop task?

Answer 17

Low motivation to complete task

Question 18

How would delusions interfere with with performance on Stroop task?

Answer 18

Think difficulty of task is a conspiracy against them

Question 19

How would speech poverty affect performance on the Stroop task?

Answer 19

Lack of will to answer if task is verbal

Question 20

How would hallucinations affect performance on the Stroop task?

Answer 20

Misperception of stimuli

Question 21

What are alternative explanations for cognitive deficits?

Answer 21

Attention, memory and verbal learning effect performance, difficult to establish dysfunction causes schizophrenia and difficult to link specific symptoms to deficits

Question 22

How would attention deficits affect performance on the Bentall’s study?

Answer 22

Participants didn’t engage fully

Question 23

How would memory deficits affect performance on the Bentall study?

Answer 23

Weak processing or recall after a week

Question 24

How would verbal learning deficits affect performance on the Bentall task?

Answer 24

Tasks were verbal so affected by weak processing