Psychological explanation - cognitive explanations for schizophrenia Flashcards
What do cognitive explanations do?
Emphasise the role of dysfunctional thought processing in people with schizophrenia ie they process information differently
What are the types of dysfunctional thoughts called that we study?
Meta-representation, centrol control and perception
What is meta-representation?
This allows us to reflect on our thoughts and behaviour
What would dysfunction in meta-representation do? What does this account for in schizophrenia?
Disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else
This could explain hallucinations and delusions such as ‘thought insertion’ (where the sufferer believes that their thoughts are not their own
What is central control?
The cognitive ability to supress automatic thoughts
What in schizophrenia is thought to come from the inability to supress automatic thoughts?
Disorganised speech, thought derailments (where thoughts and speech become incoherent because each word they hear triggers other related words (which they cant’t supress) which leads to them wandering off topic (thought disorder) or muddling their words (disorganised speech)
What is perception?
To be able to perceive a face we must recognise features (eyes, nose, mouth) and we need to process specific features (whose nose, eyes, mouth) and we need to process configuration (where they are in relation to eachother)
What is the study for perception? What does this mean?
Shin et al (2008) - studied if there were any differences in perception between schizophrenics and typical people (control group)
He found that schizophrenics couldn’t process the configuration as well as the controls
This means they cannot interpret a persons facial expression accurately - meaning they are more likely to misinterpret an expression
