psychological explan

• Who identified different kinds of dysfunctional thought processing in schizophrenia?

  Christopher Frith and others
• What are some cognitive dysfunctions associated with schizophrenia?

  Metarepresentation, central control, egocentric bias
• What is metarepresentation?


  Insight into own thoughts and behavior
• What is the key feature of metarepresentation?

  Understanding own intentions and goals and to distinguish this from the thoughts, intentions or goals of others
• What does dysfunction in metarepresentation impair?

  Ability to recognize own thoughts as separate from others
• What happens when there is dysfunction in metarepresentation?

  Incorrectly attributing thoughts to external sources
• What is central control?

  Ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead
• What happens when central control is impaired?

  Difficulty in filtering out automatic thoughts
• What is an example of impaired central control in schizophrenia?

  Derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences
• Why do derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences happen in people with schizophrenia?

  Each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these
• What is egocentric bias?

  Assuming irrelevant events are related to oneself
• How do schizophrenics interpret external stimuli such as overheard conversations?

  As being about themselves
• What is the role of attentional processes?

  Filtering out irrelevant auditory information.
• How do people with schizophrenia have issues with their attentional processes?

  They give excess attention to auditory stimuli.
• What type of information do we selectively attend to?

  Speech patterns are selectively attended to.
• How does excessive attention to auditory stimuli affect perception?

  Non-speech sounds may be misinterpreted as speech.
• Who conducted supporting evidence for the cognitive explanation of schizophrenia?

  Sterling et al. (2006)
• Who did Sterling et al. (2006) compare?

  30 patients with schizophrenia to 18 non-patient controls
• What did Sterling et al. (2006) ask participants to do?

  A range of cognitive tasks, including the Stroop test
• What did Sterling et al. (2006) find?

  Patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group. ​
• What are the real life applications of the cognitive explanation of schizophrenia?

  CBT
• What are patients taught in CBT?

  To recognise examples of dysfunctional or delusional thinking, then may receive help on how to avoid acting on these thoughts
• How does CBT connect to the cognitive explanation of schizophrenia?

  The central idea is that patients problems are based on incorrect beliefs and expectations, CBT aims to identify and alter irrational thinking.​
• What is a weakness of the cognitive explanation of schizophrenia?

  Alternative explanation: Biological explanation
• Where does strong evidence for the biological explanation of schizophrenia come from?

  Scientific studies such as brain scans and twin studies
• Why does strong evidence for the biological approach pose a problem for the cognitive explanation of schizophrenia?


  It is unlikely that these biological factors lack validity in favour of a cognitive approach.​
• What may be a more valid way of explaining schizophrenia?

  An interactionist approach to explaining schizophrenia may be the most valid and the cognitive approach viewed singularly might be too limited