Schizophrenia - Individual Differences Explanations: Cognitive Approach Flashcards
What are the 4 components of the cognitive explanations for schizophrenia
- explaining hallucinations
- explaining negative symptoms
- lack of pre-conscious filters
- compromised theory of mind
Describe how explaining hallucinations links to schizophrenia
- Morrison (1998) proposed that hallucinations are brought on by triggers such as sleep deprivation. This can cause you to hear voices in a maladaptive way
- because you appraise (interpret) the voices inappropriately (such as believing a voice belongs to someone else or the devil), it shows that your appraisal system has gone wrong
- when you appraise wrongly, you behave wrongly. This means that an individual might decide to socially withdraw or self harm
- this makes them feel negative and start believing the voices, leading to feelings of sadness, shame or guilt.
- and because you hear these voices and believe them to be true, you appraise them incorrectly, creating a vicious cycle
Describe hoe explaining negative symptoms links to schizophrenia
- This borrows the cognitive triad from Beck in 2008 to explain depression. It also works to explain schizophrenia
- the 3 corners of the triad are: the self (what you think of yourself), the world (thoughts about how your life is set up) and the future (thinking about how things won’t improve for you)
- if a schizophrenic endorses these negative thoughts about all 3 corners, they won;t experience pleasure correctly because their mental filters only allow negative messages in. This leads to negative symptoms
- This would lead to negative symptoms such as flatness of affect, avolition and anhedonia
Describe how lack of pre-conscious filters leads to schizophrenia
- Christopher Frith (1979) suggest some core positive symptoms can be explained by difficulties in your pre-conscious content
- you might hear a voice and let it go into the back of the mind, where it is interpreted and then brought back to the front of the mind where you can then conscious think who that was
- in a schizophrenic these filters are impaired
- They struggle to filter out all the information they get from the environment, leading to an overload of sensory input.
- This flood of unfiltered information makes it difficult for the person to distinguish between internal thoughts and external stimuli, disrupting the normal processing of information
- contributing to the occurrence of auditory and visual hallucinations
Describe how compras used theory of mind leads to schizophrenia
- Christopher Frith (1992)
- it is the ability to understand and attribute intentions and emotions to others based on their body language
- This is something we aren’t born with and is therefore why children don’t have it. You have to develop it - Autistic individuals struggle with as a result of not having it properly developed
- In schizophrenics it involves 3 cognitive systems being at fault. These are:
1) disordered willed action: this explains negative symptoms such as avolition or disordered thinking as the individual lacks the will to explain their thoughts logically.
2) disordered of self-monitoring : explains delusions as they cannot recognise these vocal hallucinations being unreal and not from any external sources (like the devil)
3) disorder of monitoring other’s thoughts and intentions: this leads to delusions of persecutions as the schizophrenics aren’t able to understand other people around them’s thoughts and and intentions (due to compromised theory of mind). Therefor they might believe the others are out to get them, leading to these delusions
What is the supporting research for this explanation
- Deanna Barch et al (1999) compared performance on a Stroop test between SZ and control.
- Found SZ was slower and had more mistakes, suggesting that they can’t filter information as effectively.
- This therefore supports the explanation of SZs having a lack of preconscious filters due to their struggle in perceiving the information
When evaluating the cognitive explanation, what are the 4 evaluative points to make
- supporting research — validity
- scientific
- reductionist
- individual diversity
Evaluate the explanation for having supporting evidence
P: One strength of the cognitive explanation is that it has high validity and reliability due to the supporting research that verifies cognitive explanations, such as pre-conscious filters
E: research from Deanna Barch et al (1999) who compared performance on a Stroop test between SZ and control. Finding SZ was slower and had more mistakes, suggesting that they can’t filter information as effectively.
T: Therefore it supports the explanation of SZ having a lack of preconscious filters due to their struggle in perceiving the information, proving the validity of this explanation and adding reliability
C: However performance on cognitive tasks like the Stroop test can be influenced by various factors such as motivation, medication status, or anxiety, which may not be fully controlled for in research, thus impacting the reliability of these findings. Therefore, while cognitive deficits are evident, they may not be the sole or primary cause of the disorder, reducing the overall validity and generalisability of this explanation.
Evaluate the cognitive approach for being scientific
P: One strength for this explanation is that it offers causal explanations for the deficits associated with with schizophrenics through the use of scientific techniques (such as brain scans)
E: For example, he proposed the faulty cognitive mechanisms is due to disconnections of the functions within the frontal cortex (decision making) and posterior region of the brain (perception). This supporting evidence was produced by detecting cerebral blood flow in brains of schizophrenics when completing cognitive tasks by using brain scans
T: therefore, because this technique used was objective and falsifiable, it means that the explanation has a higher validity, which adds more credibility and accuracy to this explanation
C: however these scans might overlook other contributing factors, such as environmental or genetic influences, suggesting that the cognitive explanation, while accurate, may oversimplify the complexity of schizophrenia by focusing too heavily on cognitive factors alone
Evaluate the cognitive explanation for being reductionist
P: One weakness of the explanation is that it is highly reductionist due to it only acknowledging cognitive impairments causing schizophrenia.
E: Other researchers like Hopes and Murray (2014) suggest an integrated model where there is biological factors that interact with cognitive factors, such as genes interacting with social pressures to provoke the dopamine system to produce the high level dopamine found in the aetiology of schizophrenics
T: Therefore, by cognitive explanations not recognising the role of biology in causing schizophrenia, it can lead to an incomplete explanation and therefore ineffective treatments that prove the explanation to have very limited useful application when compared to other treatments (such as anti-psychotics which are much more commonly prescribed to treat individuals with schizophrenia - rather than CBT).
C: Tarrier et al. (2000) found that combining CBT with antipsychotic medication led to greater reductions in symptoms and fewer relapses in individuals with schizophrenia compared to medication alone. Suggesting that while cognitive explanations may not fully address biological factors, cognitive interventions like CBT that come from cognitive explanations still play a valuable role in improving treatment outcomes, and shouldn’t be discarded
Evaluate the cognitive explanation for not being able to account for individual diversity
P: One weakness of the cognitive explanation is that although it explains the cognitive symptoms of sz, it doesn’t explain issue with movement, which isn’t present in all indivudals with schizophrenia
E: An example of this individual diversity would be catatonia, such as flexy waxibility. This involves a lack of movement for long periods of time, even if the individual is in uncomfortable positions for long periods of time. If the explanation was completely reliable and valid, it would be able to explain this variability of schizophrenic displaying catatonic behaviour or not
T: Therefore this becomes even problematic in treatment of schizophrenics based on cognitive explanation (i.e. through CBT). Although CBT may address cognitive symptoms, it won’t be applicable for these other important symptoms of schizophrenia (like catatonic behaviour) leading to incomplete treatment plans for individuals
