Cognitive Explanation for SZ Flashcards
What is the idea behind the cognitive explanation?
It focusses on mental processes such as thinking, language and attention.
What do the cognitive explanations suggest SZ symptoms come from?
SZ is associated with several types of dysfunctional thought processing.
Characterised by disruption to normal processing.
Where does the cognitive approach suggest reduced cognitive functioning comes from?
Reduced thought processing in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms.
Reduced processing of information in the temporal and cigulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Lower level of information processing suggest cognition likely to be impaired.
What is metarepresentation dysfunction?
The cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour.
Allows insight into our own intentions and goals, and to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction here- would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thought as being carried out by ourselves (rather than others).
What type of symptoms would a dysfunction in metarepresentation lead to?
Hallucinations of hearing voices or delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thought projected into the mind by others).
What is central control dysfunction?
Issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses whilst performing deliberate actions.
People with SZ tend to experience derailment of thoughts because each word triggers associations, and the person cannot suppress automatic responses to them.
How did John Stirling (2006) provide support for the cognitive explanation?
Compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with SZ and control group of 30 without.
Tasks included stroop task and others.
In support of the central control theory, people with SZ took longer, over twice as long on average.
What is a limitation of the cognitive explanation?
Reductionist - some symptoms such as delusions are incredibly common so to reduce them down to being due to metarepresentation dysfunction only is quite over simplistic
Social sensitivity - placing blame on the individual for their symptoms.
Cause and effect problems.
