Cognitive explanations Flashcards
What does the cognitive explanation of schizophrenia state?
The cognitive explanation states that patients with schizophrenia experience a disruption to normal thought processing
What is metarepresentation?
The cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour
What does metarepresentation allow someone to do?
- Insight into own intentions and goals
- To interpret the actions of others
What are the 2 types of dysfunctional thought processes in patients with schizophrenia that Frith identified?
Dysfunctional meta cognition and issues with central control
What is dysfunctional meta cognition?
He stated that patients lack the cognitive ability to reflect on their own thoughts and behaviours and that they are unable to recognise whether actions and thoughts are carried out by themself or another person
What is an example of dysfunctional meta cognition?
They are unable to recognise that their hallucinations are in fact just their own inner voice
What did Frith describe dysfunctional meta cognition as?
Frith described this as an abnormality of self-monitoring and a failure in meta-representation
What is research for dysfunctional meta cognition?
Frith tested this idea by asking patients to decide whether items that had been read out loud were done so by themselves, an experimenter or a computer
What were the findings from Frith’s research into dysfunctional meta cognition?
Patients who had speech poverty as a symptom showed the worst performance on the task
Frith suggested that this may be linked to memory and attention difficulties crucial for self-monitoring
What is evidence for issues with meta representation in schizophrenia?
Yellowless et al (2002) developed a machine that produced virtual hallucinations, such as hearing the television telling you to kill yourself or one person’s face morphing into another’s.
The intention is to show individuals with schizophrenia that their hallucinations are not real.
What does the evidence for issues with meta representation in schizophrenia suggest?
That understanding the effects of cognitive deficits allows psychologists to create new initiatives that could improve the quality of their lives
What is issues with central control?
Frith also highlighted that people with schizophrenia have difficulty performing deliberate actions.
Je stated that issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses
What did Frith say issues with central control may explain?
May explain disordered thinking, that an inability to suppress automatic thoughts results in derailment of intended thoughts
What did Frith state each word in a sentence triggers regarding issues with central control?
He stated that each word in a spoken sentence triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these. This can result in speech poverty
What is research for issues with central control?
Stirling et al showed that schizophrenia patients perform poorly on the Stroop test. This can be explained through poor central control - an inability to suppress the automatic thoughts of what the word is saying
What does the faulty schema theory suggest?
Helmsley (1993, 2005) suggested that schizophrenia involves a breakdown between information that has already been stored in memory and new incoming sensory information
What did Hemsley state happens when individuals with schizophrenia encounter new situations?
He stated that individuals with schizophrenia encounter new situations, their schemas are not activated, as a result, they experience sensory overload because they do not know which aspects of a situation to attend to and which to ignore.
It also means they struggle to predict what will happen next
What did Helmsley state about the schema theory for people with schizophrenia?
That their poor integration of memory and perception leads to disorganised thinking and behaviour
