psychological explanations for schizophrenia: cognitive

Question 1

what are the 3 parts of cognitive explanation?

Answer 1

• dysfunctional thinking
• metarepresentation dysfunction
• central control dysfunction

Question 2

how can cognitive explanations explain schizophrenia?

Answer 2

• schizophrenia is characterised by disturbance in language, attention, thought and perception
• schizophrenia is associated with several types of dysfunctional thought processing, which can provide possible explanations for schizophrenia as a whole
• lower than usual levels of processing (possibly caused by biological factors) suggests that cognition is likely to be impaired

Question 3

dysfunctional thinking: simon et al. (2015)

Answer 3

• reduced thought processing in ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms
• reduced processing of information in temporal and cingulate gyri is associated with hallucinations

Question 4

what 2 dysfunctional thought processes did frith et al. (1992) identify?

Answer 4

• metarepresentation dysfunction
• central control dysfunction

Question 5

what is metarepresentation?

Answer 5

• cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour
• gives us insight into our own intentions and goals
• allows us to interpret the actions of others

Question 6

how can metarepresentation dysfunction explain schizophrenia?

Answer 6

• disrupted ability to recognise own actions and thoughts as being carried by ourselves rather than someone else
• this explains hallucinations of hearing voices and delusions like thought insertion

Question 7

how can central control dysfunction explain schizophrenia?

Answer 7

• issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while performing deliberate actions
• speech poverty and thought disorder could be due to an inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts
• this can lead to derailment of thoughts as automatic responses to word associations cannot be suppressed

Question 8

evaluation: research support (stirling et al. 2006)

Answer 8

• compared performance of a on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with schizophrenia and a control group of 30 people without eg. stroop task
• in stroop task, tendency to read words aloud has to be suppressed
• people with schizophrenia took over twice as long on average to name the font colours

Question 9

evaluation: only explains proximal origins of symptoms

Answer 9

• only explains what is happening now to produce symptoms, instead of what intially caused the condition
• currently unclear how genetic variation or childhood trauma might lead to problems with metarepresentation dysfunction or central control
• reductionist, only a partial explanation

Question 10

evaluation: compatible with biological explanation

Answer 10

• role of biological factors is emphasised eg. genes are inherited and responsible for dysfunctional thinking
• neurological abnormalities can cause cognitive difficulties in attention, communication and dealing with a lot of information

Question 11

evaluation: not cognitive

Answer 11

• some cognitive explanations relate to specific subtypes / symptoms but not others
• cognitive disturbances may be symptoms of the disorder rather than an explanation