Psychological Explantaion - A03

Question 1

Research support

Answer 1

One strength of these explanations is evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia.
Indicators of family dysfunction include insecure attachment and exposure to childhood trauma, especially abuse. According to a review by John Read et al. (2005) adults with schizophrenia are disproportionately likely to have insecure attachment, particularly Type C or D.
Read et al. also reported that 69% of women and 59% of men with schizophrenia have a history of physical and/or sexual abuse. In the Merkved et al. (2017) study, on the previous spread, most adults with schizophrenia reported at least one childhood trauma, mostly abuse.
This strongly suggests that family dysfunction makes people more vulnerable to schizophrenia.

Question 2

Explanations lack support

Answer 2

One limitation of family explanations is the poor evidence base for any of the explanations.
Although there is plenty of evidence supporting the idea that childhood family-based stress is associated with adult schizophrenia, there is almost none to support the importance of traditional family-based theories such as the schizophrenogenic mother and double bind. Both these theories are based on clinical observation of people with schizophrenia and also informal assessment of their mothers’ personalities, but not systematic evidence.
This means that family explanations have not been able to account for the link between
childhood trauma and schizophrenia.

Question 3

Research support (2)

Answer 3

One strength of cognitive explanations is evidence for dysfunctional thought processing.
John Stirling et al. (2006) compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with schizophrenia and a control group of 30 people without schizophrenia. Tasks included the Stroop task (see right), in which participants have to name the font-colours of colour-words, so have to suppress the tendency to read the words aloud. As predicted by Frith et al’s central control theory, people with schizophrenia took longer - over twice as long on average - to name the font-colours.
This means that the cognitive processes of people with schizophrenia are impaired.

Question 4

Proximal explanation

Answer 4

One limitation of cognitive explanations is that they only explain the proximal origins of symptoms.
Cognitive explanations for schizophrenia are proximal explanations because they explain what is happening now to produce symptoms - as distinct from distal explanations which focus on what initially caused the condition. Possible distal explanations are genetic and family dysfunction explanations. What is currently unclear and not well-addressed is how genetic variation or childhood trauma might lead to problems with metarepresentation or central control.
This means that cognitive theories on their own only provide partial explanations for schizophrenia.