Psychological explanation Flashcards
What are the 2 psychological explanations?
Dysfunctional family and cognitive explanation
Family dysfunction: Schizophrenogenic mother
- Means abnormal functioning within family
- Schizophrenogenic mother - a schizophrenia causing mother
- Cold, rejecting and family characterized by tension/secrecy.
- Leads to distrust that develops into paranoid delusions.
Family dysfunction: Double bind theory
- Role of communication
- Child is constantly in fear of doing wrong as they receive mixed messages
- View world as confusing and dangerous
- Symptoms of disorganized thinking and paranoid delusions
Family dysfunction: Expressed emotion
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What are 2 examples of dysfunctional thought processing amongst schizophrenic patients?
Meta representation and central control
What is meta-representation?
The cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts/behaviour. It leads to obvious hallucinations of voice/ paranoid delusions, as if someone else is in charge
What is central control?
The cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while performing actions. Leads to disorganized speech
Strength: supporting evidence
- Myer-Linderberg found reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex of schizophrenic patients when completing a working memory task
- This is evidence that their memory is impaired
Strength: supporting evidence
- Berger (1965) had a higher recall of double bind statements by their mothers compared to those who aren’t schizophrenic
- Means people with SZ have more experiences with double bind
- Shows a correlation
Weakness: Lack of credibility
- Information childhood experience after the development of schizophrenia
- Memory of childhood is altered due to the diagnosis
- Lacks credibility
Weakness: Gender bias
- Suggest families, especially mothers are responsible for children having schizophrenia
- No mention of fathers as they pay a passive role, they aren’t responsible
- Socially sensitive and gender bias, promoted discrimination towards mothers
