Cognitive Explanation

• What is the Cognitive explanation of Schizophrenia?

  • Sz is caused by faulty information processing
  • Individuals with Sz have difficulties with attention, perception, memory, and other cognitive processes leading to distorted perception of reality and impaired function
• What are the 2 aspects of the cognitive explanation of Sz?

  • Faulty information processing
  • Disrupted Meta-representation
• What is Faulty Attention Processing?

  • People with Sz have an impaired ability to filter unimportant information from their mind and their sensory input
  • Thoughts that would normally be filtered out are treated as if they were important, leading to positive symptoms of Sz
• What is Disrupted Meta-Representation?

  • Meta-representation is the ability to be aware of our own thoughts and behaviours
  • People with Sz are unable to do this, resulting in them being unable to recognise their own thoughts
  • As a result they experience thoughts as if someone else was saying (hallucinations) and rationalise this by thinking some external force is planting thoughts in their head (delusions)
• Strength of the Cognitive Explanation - Supporting Research

  • A research study compared a group of Sz patients to a control group on Stroop Test performance
  • Sz patients took twice as long as the control group to name the ink colours and ignore the words
  • Links to Faulty Processing
• Limitation of Cognitive Explanation:

  The two cognitive explanations could just be symptoms as something else could be causing the Sz
• Limitation of Cognitive Explanation - It is incomplete

  • Diathesis Stress Model
  • All psychological disorders are caused by the combination of a gene inherited from parents and a triggering event (stress)