Psychological Explanations Flashcards
Outline the aspects of psychological explanations for Schizophrenia
Family dysfunction:
Schizophregenic mother
Double-bind theory
Expressed emotion
Cognitive:
Dysfunctional thinking
Meta representation dysfunction
Central control dysfunction
Outline the schizophregenic mother
Fromm-Reichmann (1948) noted many of her patients spoke of particular type of parent
According to F-R, schiz mother is:
Cold, rejecting, controlling & creates family tension/secrecy
Leads to distrust later developing into paranoid delusion, then schiz
Outline the double-bind theory
-Bateson et al. (1972) family climate vital in development of schiz but emphasised role of communication style in family
-Developing child found trapped in situations where they fear doing wrong thing, but get mixed signals about what it is & feel unable to comment on unfairness or seek clarification
-When they ‘get it wrong’ child punished by withdrawal of love
-Leaves them with confused & dangerous understanding of world, reflected in disorganised symptoms & paranoid delusions
Outline expressed emotion as a psychological explanation for Schizophrenia
EE = Level of emotion, particularly negative, expressed towards patient by carers (family members)
Verbal criticism of patient, sometimes with violence
Hostility towards patient, e.g. anger & rejection
Emotional over involvement in life of patient, like needless self-sacrifice
These high levels of EE for patients = sources of stress, can be relapse with Schizos but also could be environmental trigger for person with vulnerability
Evaluate family dysfunction as a a psychological theory for explaining Schizophrenia
STRENGTH - Research support for link between family dysfunction & schiz
E.g. - Indicators of family dysfunction = insecure attachment & childhood trauma, e.g. abuse
A review by Read et al. (2005) found schizo adults are disproportionately likely to have insecure attachment: 69% of women & 59% of men have history of physical/sexual abuse
In Mørkved et al. (2017) study, most schizo adults had at least one childhood trauma
Ex. -Strongly suggests family dysfunction makes people more vulnerable to schiz
HOWEVER, correlation doesn’t = causation
LIMITATION - lack of support through poor evidence base
E.g. - Although there’s plenty for evidence supporting link between childhood trauma & adult schiz, almost none support importance of family-based theories, like schiz mum
Both theories based on clinical observation of patients & informal assessment of personality of mums of patients but no systematic evidence
Ex. - Means family explanations not been able to account for link between childhood trauma & schiz
Outline dysfunctional thinking as a psychological explanation for schiz
-Schiz characterised by disruption to normal thought processing
-Reduced thought processing in ventral striatum associated with negative symptoms
-Reduced processing of info in temporal & cingulate gyri associated with hallucinations
-This lower-than-usual level of info processing suggests cognition likely to be impaired
-These can provide possible explanations for schiz
Outline meta representation dysfunction as a psychological explanation of schiz
Frith et al. (1992) identified 2 kinds of dysfunctional thought processes:
First is Meta representation = cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts & behaviour
-Allows insight into own intentions & goals & allows us to interpret actions of others
-Dysfunction in this area disrupts ability to recognise own actions & thoughts as carried out by ourselves rather than someone else
-This explains hallucinations hearing voices & delusions like thought insertion
Outline central control dysfunction as a psychological explanation of schiz
-Frith also identified issues with cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while performing deliberate actions
-Speech poverty & thought disorder could result from inability to suppress auto thoughts & speech triggered by other thoughts
-E.g. schizos experience derailment of thoughts as each word triggers associations & person can’t suppress auto responses to them
Evaluate cognitive explanations as an explanation for schizophrenia
STRENGTH - Research support
E.g. - Stirling et al. (2006) compared performance on range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with Schiz & control group of 30 people without schiz
Included Stroop task, where parties name font-colours of colour-words, so have to suppress tendency to read words aloud
As predicted by Frith’s central control theory, people with schiz took longer (over 2x) to name font-colours
Ex. - Means cognitive processes of people with schiz impaired
LIMITATION - Proximal explanation
E.g. - Cognitive explanations for schiz are proximal explanations as they explain what’s happening now to produce symptoms, compared to distal explanations which tell what initially caused condition
How genetic variation or childhood trauma leads to problems with meta representation or central control are unclear
Ex. - Means that cognitive theories on their own only provide partial explanations for schiz
