Psychological Explanation- Cognitive Flashcards
Cognitive explanations of Sz
Dysfunctional thinking:
Meta representation disfunction
Central control disfunction
Attention deficit
Dysfunctional thinking
Role of mental processes
Disruption to normal thought processing
Leads to MRD and CCD
Meta representation disfunction
Ability to reflect on thoughts/ behaviours allowing insight to own and other intentions and goals.
Cognitively monitor your own thought processes to view mental state of you and others and detect cognitive biases.
Dysfunction - can’t recognise own thoughts and actions as being carried out by themselves
Central control disfunction
Ability to Suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions.
suppressing internal monologues.
Inability to suppress thoughts and speech- derailment-word salad etc
Stirling stroop test
Sz took over twice as long to answer correctly.
This suggests that, as per the central control dysfunction theory, people with Sz experienced difficulty suppressing the tendency to read the word aloud.
Attention deficit
Inability to suppress/filter preconscious thoughts,
Making them ‘heard’
Strength cognitive explanation Sz (evidence)
Bentall
read out category words e.g. plants beginning with the letter C. Some were provided for them, some they had to think of themselves. A week later, they were asked to identify which words they had read, which words were new and which words they thought up themselves. Schizophrenics struggled to distinguish between words they have come up with themselves and those they had heard - a lack of metarepresentation
Limitation Cognitive explanation Sz (socially sensitive)
Social sensitivity - placing blame on the individual for their symptoms.
Limitation cognitive explanation Sz (real)
Tasks in some of the studies e.g. Bentall, stroop test
lack mundane realism and so may have theories that lack validity.
