Psychological Explanations: Cognitive Explanations Flashcards
Difference between hallucinations and delusions
Hallucinations = sensory experinces of stim that r distorted owrceptions of things that r there (environmental/physical)
Delusions = beliefs that have no basis in reality
Key terms
Dysfunctional thought processsing
Schemas
Faulty filter
Meta-rep
Central control
Attentional bias
Cog ex
Something dysfunctional about thought processing that produces undesirable consequences. Particularly evident in those who display positive symptoms (del/hall)
5 explanations
Mental rep
Cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts + behaviours
Dysfunction disrupts ability to recognise own actions and others intentions
Frith = schizophrenics r unable to distinguish between actions from external/internal forces
Most symptoms can be explained in terms by 3 cog processes:
-inability to generate willed action
-inability to monitor wille action
-inability to monitor beliefs + intentions of others
Caused by disconnection between frontal areas of brain concerned with action
Faulty filter
Frith - schiz is result o faulty attention system
Preconcious thoughts contain large quantities of info that would normally be filtered
Schiz = result of overload as thoughts that would be filtered out as irrelevant r now interpreted as more important than they are (in Concious awareness)
So schizs have difficulty focusing on anything for period of time accounting for pos symptoms
Central control
Cog ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead (concious)
Inability to suppress automatic thoughts leads to disorganised speech
Schizophrenics experience derailment of thoughts + spoken sentences as each word triggered associations
Patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these
Strength - sarin + wallin
Delusional patients found to show bias in info processing (jumping to conclusions)
Schizophrenic individuals with hallucinations had impaired self-monitoring + tended to experience own thoughts as voices
So therapist can use this info when choosing techniques for treatment
Positive symptoms of schiz have their origins in faulty cognition
Meta-representation - disrupted ability to recognise own thoughts/cant distinguish actions of ercternal and internal as hear own thoughts etc
Support Stirling et al
Compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schiz with 18 non schiz patients on a range of cog tasks including strop test in which participants have to name ink colours, not in order
Schiz Patients took over twice as long to name the colours ads control group
Supports central control as states schiz have an inability to suppress automatic thoughts leading to derailment of thoughts and sentences as words trigger associations
Looking ta meaning rather than colour
Support Meyer-lindenberg
Examined brain activity in schiz while comparing working memory tasks
Prefrontal cortex shared reduced activation referring poor performance on such tasks. At Sam time dopamine levels were evaluated
Suggesting prefrontal cortex is linked to dopamine abnormalities
Cog may be useful as require cog processes for tasks + schizophrenics can’t access this so supports cog explanations
Support for cog ex - counter
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE, 2014)
found consistent evidence that, when compared with treatment by
antipsychotic medication, cognitive behavioural therapy was more
effective in reducing symptom severity and improving levels of social
Reducing not curing so may nit be as useful as deemed
