Schizophrenia: Cognitive Explanation

Question 1

Outline the cognitive explanation for schizophrenia.

Answer 1

• Schizophrenia can be attributed to dysfunctional thought processing associated with specific internal mental processes.
• Christopher Frith has identified meta representation as dysfunctional thought process that can explain many of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Metarepresentation is the general cognitive ability to think about thoughts. This includes both thinking about our own thoughts and the thoughts of other people (typically called theory of mind).
• Dysfunctional metarepresentation can impair a persons ability to recognise their thoughts as their own. This misattribution may lead to auditory hallucinations, where they percieve their own thoughts as external voices.
• It can also cause delusions of thoughts insertion, where a person believed an external source placed thoughts in their mind.

Question 2

How does cognitive neuroscientific evidence supports Friths claim about dysfunctional metarepresentation being a cause of auditory hallucinations.

Answer 2

Using fMRI, Allen (2007) found that schizophrenic patients experiencing auditory
hallucinations showed abnormally low activity in the superior temporal gyrus, a brain region
involved in identifying inner speech. This supports Frith’s theory, as if auditory hallucinations were the result of a failure to
metarepresent the source of inner speech, then we would expect to identify a neural correlate in the
brain regions responsible for this function. This is precisely what Allen’s findings demonstrate. This
evidence highlights a key strength of cognitive explanations for schizophrenia—their compatibility
with biological explanations. Rather than competing, they complement each other by explaining
schizophrenia at different levels of explanation. Cognitive explanations provide a functional account
of how dysfunctional thought processes cause symptoms, while biological explanations identify
where these processes are implemented in the brain (i.e., their neural correlates).

Question 3

Continued outline…

Answer 3

Frith’s cognitive theory also suggests that avolition, a negative symptom of
schizophrenia, results from dysfunctional metarepresentation. If individuals cannot
metarepresent their own motivations (i.e., they cannot think ‘I want to do X’), they will
struggle to act on them, leading to the difficulty initiating goal-directed behaviour which
characterizes avolition. Another dysfunctional thought process linked to schizophrenia is “jumping to
conclusions”, a decision-making bias where individuals make rapid judgments based on
limited evidence. This bias is thought to contribute to delusions, as those who jump to
conclusions are more likely to form and accept beliefs that contradict reality.

Question 4

What research demonstrates the jumping to conclusion bias in people with schizophrenia?

Answer 4

Huq et al. (1988) asked participants to determine which of two urns (containers) beads
were drawn from, one with 85% red beads or one with 85% blue beads. Compared to controls,
schizophrenia participants requested fewer beads be drawn (typically just 1 or 2 draws) before they
decided which urn was being used. This finding provides evidence of the jumping to conclusion bias within patients with
schizophrenia, as the schizophrenic participants made rapid decisions with limited evidence about
which urn was being used, indicating a dysfunctional style of decision making. However, this study’s
findings on the jumping to conclusions bias are limited by low ecological validity. Deciding on bead
composition is an artificial task that may not reflect real-world reasoning, particularly in delusional
beliefs that cause distress, such as a paranoid delusions (e.g., believing family members are plotting
against you).

Question 5

What is a limitation with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia relating to the issue of correlation not equalling causation.

Answer 5

Most of the evidence supporting the cognitive explanation for schizophrenia is evidence of an
association between dysfunctional thought processes and particular symptoms.
While dysfunctional thought processes may cause schizophrenia symptoms, it’s also possible that
the direction of causation runs the other way, with the symptom developing first and then causing
the thought dysfunction. It’s also possible the association between dysfunctional thought processes
and symptoms may be the result of a third variable, such as a neural correlate or family dysfunction
that explains the symptom and the cognitive abnormality. This illustrates the issue of determinism,
as the current evidence makes it difficult to attribute dysfunctional thought processes as
determining the symptoms of schizophrenia.