Cognitive explanations

Question 1

Cognitive approach / dysfunctional thought processing

Answer 1

It has been found that schizophrenics may suffer with problems with processing and understanding language. The cognitive approach explores these aspects.

Question 2

Perception deficits

Answer 2

Configuration information is important as it tells us about the expressions on a face .

Shin et al. (2008) found that configuration information was poor in schizophrenics, therefore they find it difficult to interpret others’ facial expressions, and leads to the misperception of people’s intents.

Question 3

Memory deficits

Answer 3

Memory deficits in schizophrenics comes from working memory.
Lee and Park (2005) suggested that poor perceptual processing leads to inferior encoding of information in the working memory, hence a poor working memory.

Not just the working memory but the overall memory of schizophrenics performs poorly. They don’t do well in simple recall and recognition tasks.

Leeson et al. (2010) carried out a test that required to recall 15 nouns and he found that they performed significantly worse than controls.

Episodic and semantic memory are also both impaired.

Question 4

Reasoning deficits

Answer 4

Schizophrenics have two problems that give rise to disordered thinking, as far as reasoning is concerned.

1. having the deceiving thoughts in the first place
2. failure to reject those thoughts as far from reality

They not only have those thoughts but they also believe them
Researchers came up with three explanations for this

1. Jumping to conclusions hypothesis
   Suggests that a deluded person is more likely to make a quick decision than a non-deluded individual.
   Garety at al. (2005) conducted a test where he presented people with two jars of colored beads, and then presented them with a bead from one jar and asked them to choose with jar it came from.
   They found that delusional participants where quicker in deciding that they knew from which jar the bead was drawn from.
2. Extreme attribution bias
   Suggests that they are more likely to attribute a negative outcome to an external source which is often a person.
3. Lack of theory of mind
   Suggests that schizophrenics may not understand that others don’t have the same views, thoughts and beliefs as them and lack of this ability may result to them believing their delusional thoughts to be true.

Question 5

Language deficits

Answer 5

Most schizophrenics seem to have some parts of their language ability impaired while others work perfectly fine.

Many of them suffer from a language output impairment in terms of fluency, but it seems to only be true in terms of spoken language and not written.

This may be because fluency deficits may not be depicted from a person writing whereas it would from a person speaking slowly.

Many also suffer with a language comprehension deficit.

Language deficits can be detected before a person’s first schizophrenic episode, though it doesn’t indicate Sz.

Question 6

Evaluation of cognitive explanation

Answer 6

Strength:
Serin and Wallin (2014) reviewed recent research evidence relating to the cognitive model of Sz. They found supporting evidence for the belief that positive symptoms arise from faulty cognition. Delusional patients showed various biases in their information processing such as jumping to conclusions. They also found that those with negative symptoms also displayed dysfunctional thought processes such as having low expectations regarding success.

Limitation:
Although the cognitive approach identifies a variety of cognitive systems are impaired in Sz, it is not always clear wether these are a cause or as a result of Sz.
There is a cause and effect problem- cognitive approach does not explaij the causes of cognitive deficit and where they come from
It is also a reductionist explanation- does not consider other factors such as genes. Coud be low neurotransmitters causing cognitive deficits.