Psychological explanations Flashcards
What does the family dysfunction theory see as the cause of schizophrenia?
Maladaptive relationships and communication patterns within families are a source of stress which can in turn cause/influence the development of schizophrenia
What are the three dysfunctional characteristics that parents of schizophrenics have?
1: High levels of interpersonal conflict (arguments)
2: Difficulty communicating with each other
3: Being excessively critical and controlling of their children
Who coined the term “double bind”?
Bateson et al.
What is the “double bind”?
The contradictory situations children could be placed in by parents where a verbal message is given but opposite behaviour is exhibited
Other than the double bind, what is another feature of the family dysfunction explanation?
Expressed emotion
What is expressed emotion?
Families who persistently exhibit criticism and hostility exert a negative influence, especially on recovering schizophrenics
What did Tienari et al. find?
The level of schizophrenia in the adopted children of biological mothers with schizophrenia into a healthy family was 5.8% compared to 36.8% for children raised in dysfunctional families
What do cognitive theories focus on?
Maladaptive thought processes
Who proposed a cognitive model of schizophrenia and what did it combine?
Beck and Rector; Neurobiological, environmental, behavioural and cognitive factors
What do brain abnormalities increase?
The likelihood of being exposed to stressful situations
What are the three types of cognitive deficits schizophrenics experience?
Attention, communication and information overload
According to the cognitive explanation, why do delusions occur?
Active cognitive biases
How does the cognitive explanation explain hallucinations?
As being attributed to biased information processing
How are cognitive deficits referred to?
Alien control symptoms
What are alien control symptoms?
Sufferers believe external people and forces are influencing their thoughts and behaviour
Why are negative symptoms of schizophrenia thought to occur according to the cognitive explanation?
Due to the use of cognitive strategies to control the high levels of mental stimulation being experienced
What did Takahashi find?
Compared electrical brain energy in schizophrenics and non-sufferers exposed to auditory tones, finding that the ability to detect changes in the tone was severely restricted in schizophrenics, which may explain the cognitive deficits, delusions and hallucinations experienced by sufferers; changes in the tone of someone’s speech conveys complex and important information concerning emotion and content
Who was Takahashi’s sample?
Male schizophrenics
What is metacognition?
The cognitive monitoring of one’s own thought processes, including the ability to detect errors in cognitive processing, such as cognitive distortions and thinking about feelings and the behavioural reactions triggered by thoughts and feelings
What does metacognition dysfunction result in?
Dysfunctional thought processes
What does dysfunctional thought processing affect?
Executive functioning (higher thinking)
Dysfunctional thought processing can lead to impairments in…
- Goal-directed behaviour
- Attention
- Memory
- Cognitive flexibility
- Self-monitoring
- Inhibition of inappropriate responses
- Physical motor control of the body
What did Lysaker et al. find and what study did they use to find it?
Used a correlational study to assess the metacognitive function of male schizophrenics and found that symptoms were linked to an inability to have awareness of one’s thoughts and feelings as well as other people’s
Who used the Hayling Sentence Completion Test and what did they find?
Joshua et al.; schizophrenics had slower response times and slower repression of inappropriate responses, indicative of impaired executive functioning
What do Garety et al. believe?
Schizophrenia is best understood by linking different explanations, both biological and psychological, with cognitive explanations being the vital link in the chain
What is the schizophrenogenic mother? What research supports and doesn’t support the theory?
Mothers who are overly dominant in the home, particularly in relation to the child, and express opposing parenting styles, e.g. affectionate one minute harsh at another (thematic apperception test)
Herman and Jones found that high-risk families had an overly dominant mother figure
Wild, Shapiro and Goldenberg found the opposite, with fathers being the most dominant figure in high-risk families (20 Qs study)