Schizophrenia: cognitive

Question 1

AO1

Answer 1

• Schizophrenia is characterised by disturbance in language, attention, thought and perception. This has led to cognitive psychologists to explain the disorder as a result of faulty information processing.
• The positive symptoms of Schizophrenia have been consistently and effectively explained by biological factors such as increased dopamine levels.

Other symptoms have been seen to be seen by them trying to make sense of their own experience- this is where the cognitive explanation comes in mainly (but not totally- it can explain some positive too)

Question 2

AO1- Frith (1979)

Answer 2

Frith’s way of explaining positive symptoms. He believes that most of the symptoms of schizophrenia can be explained in terms of deficits in three cognitive processes:
· Inability to generate willed action;
· Inability to monitor willed action;
· Inability to monitor the beliefs and intentions of others

Schizophrenia results from patient’s increased ‘self-awareness’ whereby they have an inability to filter out unnecessary cognitive ‘noise’

Frith suggested that schizophrenics fail to monitor their own thoughts correctly, misattributing them to the outside world. When a person hears voices, it is actually their own inner speech being misinterpreted

Question 3

AO1- Helmsley

Answer 3

suggested that the central deficit in schizophrenia is a breakdown in the relationship between information that has already been stored in memory and new, incoming sensory information. He suggested that this processing break down in schizophrenia and those schemas are not activated. This causes sensory overload- this causes behaviours like selective attention impairment to tune out the info

Can be linked to biological differences seen e.g the hippocampus may be at fault.

Question 4

+AO3- McGuigan (1966)

Answer 4

Identified that immediately before episodes of auditory hallucination were reported, some schizophrenic patients showed activation of the vocal centres, which may suggest that they misinterpret their own inner voice as belonging to someone else.

during hallucinations the part of the brain in the temporal lobe responsible for identifying and monitoring ‘inner speech’ recorded reduced activity. This suggests that the individuals might have been experiencing an internal conversation, but were more likely to perceive the voice as belonging to another.

Question 5

+AO3- Frith and Done (1989)

Answer 5

Asked participants to follow a target on a video game with a joystick. Both schizophrenics and non-schizophrenics could do this when they could see the errors they made on the screen, but when the errors were not visible, schizophrenics with delusions did a lot worse than the control group, suggesting that schizophrenics have difficulty monitoring their own actions

Question 6

+AO3- Useful

Answer 6

Explains negative symptoms well

helped create CBT

Question 7

+AO3- Frith

Answer 7

proposed a disconnection between the frontal and posterior areas of the brain.

Question 8

-AO3- Sitskoom et al. (2004)

Answer 8

cognitive deficits found in patients with schizophrenia were also found in relatives of the patients who did not have the disorder. Therefore there is a genetic component.

Question 9

-AO3- Beck (2009)

Answer 9

summarised the effect of dopamine reduction on ‘cognitive loading’ (reduced neurotransmitters cause the brain to struggle in processing information). This leads to ‘cognitive insufficiency’ this sets people on the pathway to developing psychosis.

Question 10

-AO3- Testability

Answer 10

Cognitive is difficult to test

Question 11

-AO3

Answer 11

Descriptive rather than explanative

No Cause and effect

Question 12

-AO3- reductionist

Answer 12

Ignores other factors/explanations