AO3

• Research Evidence:

  • Barch- compared the performance on a Stroop test of people with SZ and a control group. Those with SZ were slower and made more mistakes than the control group.
  • Suggests there is evidence that those with SZ cannot filter information as effectively as people who don't have SZ. This supports Firths idea that the attentional filters op people with SZ are defective.
• Reductionist Explanation:

  • Cog explanations can account for certain symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, they are not very effective in explaining other symptoms and therefore other important factors such as biological and childhood experiences are ignored.
  • Cog explanations are insufficient to explain all symptoms that may be experienced by a person with SZ, means we cannot rely on these explanations alone to fully explain the causes of SZ.
• Describes SZ rather than explain the root cause:

  • Cog approaches would suggest that one cause of SZ is cog deficits such as faulty attentional processing, however the cog explanation fails to explain the origin of these issues.
  • Therefore suggests the cog explanations are insufficient as they cannot account for the full case of the disorder.
• Conclusion:

  • More scientific and logical compared to psychodynamic
  • Doesn't put blame on families/mothers
  • Large body of experimental evidence
  • Cognitive treatment is effective for some.
• AO2!!!!

  • symptom caused by problems with the way we process information or disordered thinking.
  • CBT helps individuals with SZ to consider and organize their disorganized thoughts in a rational way
  • CBT aims to challenge SZ patients interpretations of events by asking them for evidence. No evidence then start to reconstruct the way they perceive such events through cog reconstructing
  • Symptoms such as hallucinations occur during stress/anxiety- pleasant activity scheduling- teach patients to apply relaxation techniques or methods of distraction to minimize their experience of symptoms