Cognitive Explanations

• Cognitive explanations explore the ways in which an individual with schizophrenia might have distorted or faulty internal mental processes, regardless of their environment. Frith suggested the cognitive explanations for schizophrenia.
• Meta-representation

  • Meta-representation is used to interpret and reflect on our actions and the actions of others. Disruption of this would impair our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as our own, and to understand the intentions of others.
  • Related to hallucinations, delusions and paranoia
• • Central control is the ability to suppress an automatic response in order to perform a deliberate action instead.
  • Those with schizophrenia take twice as long to complete the Stroop test (name the ink colour) correctly as they struggle to suppress their automatic responses.
• Disrupted central control could explain disorganised speech and thought - individuals lose track of what they are saying as they are derailed by other automatic thoughts. Sufferers tend to experience derailment of thought and spoken sentences because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.
• Central control - Joshua et al (2009) used the Hayling sentence completion test and compared the results of schizophrenics and healthy patients. Those with schizophrenia had the slowest response times and were less able to suppress inappropriate responses than either of the other groups. They had difficulties suppressing automatic responses, which supports the idea that those with schizophrenia experience derailment of thought and difficulties with central control.
• Central control - Stroop test. In this test, participants have to name the ink colours, suppressing the urge to read the word instead. Those with schizophrenia took twice as long to name the colour of the word than healthy controls. This supports the idea that schizophrenics struggle more to suppress their automatic responses than those without schizophrenia, and therefore supports the idea that those with schizophrenia struggle more with central control.
• Metarepresentation - Sarin and Wallin (2014). Those with schizophrenia showed various cognitive biases, for example, tending to experience their own thoughts as voices. This links to metarepresentation. Delusional patients were also found to show various biases in their information processing such as jumping to conclusions and lack of reality testing.
• Cognitive explanations

  • General - cannot establish a direction of causality. Evidence of impaired cognitive abilities does NOT mean that they were the cause of the disorder in the first place. The schizophrenia may have caused the cognitive impairment.
  • General - Successful in that it has lead to the development of CBTp which has been a success in treating schizophrenia. If fixing faulty thought processes provides a solution to schizophrenia, then it is likely that they are a problem in the first place.