Schizophrenia - psychological explanations

Question 1

What is family dysfunction

Answer 1

• processes within a family
• Schizophrogenic mother
• double bind theory
• expressed emotion

Question 2

What is the Schizophrenogenic mother

Answer 2

• cold, rejecting, controlling
• tense family climate
• leading to distrust later developing into paranoid delusions

Question 3

what is the double bind theory

Answer 3

Bateson et al (1972)
- risk factor in developing SZ
- no consistent communication
- unclear communication in families

Question 4

What is expressed emotion

Answer 4

• level of negative emotion expressed towards a person with SZ
• verbal criticisms
• hostility
• serious source of stress
• explanation for relapse

Question 5

What is the support for family dysfunction

Answer 5

Read et al (2005)
- adults with SZ likely to have insecure attachments
- 69% of women and 59% men with SZ have a history of sexual or physical abuse

Question 6

What is the limitation of family dysfunction

Answer 6

• no evidence to support the importance of tradiational family based theories
• SZ mother and double bind theory are based on clinical observation of people with SZ - no systematic evidence
• family explanations cannot account for the link between childhood trauma and SZ

Question 7

What are cognitive explanaions

Answer 7

• dysfunctional thinking
• metarepresentation dysfunction
• central control dysfunction

Question 8

What is dysfunctional thinking

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What is meta representation dysfunction

Answer 9

Frith et al (1992)
- identified metarepresentation - cognitive ability to reflect on thought and behaviour
- dysfunction would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else
- explains hallucinations and delusions

Question 10

What is central control dysfunction

Answer 10

Firth
- issue with cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses whilst performing deliberate actions
- speech poverty can result from speech triggered by other thoughts

Question 11

What is the strength of cognitive explanations

Answer 11

Stirling et al (2006)
- compared performance on cognitive tasks in 30 people with SZ to a control
- pps had to name the font colours of colour word - suppress tendency to read the word out loud
- people with SZ took longer to name the font colours

Question 12

What is the limitation of cognitive explanations

Answer 12

• only explain proximal origins of symptoms
• explain what is happening now to produce symptoms
• distal explanations explain what initially caused the condition
• cognitive theories only provide a partial explanation