Cognitive explanation

• What is the cognitive explanation for schizophrenia?

  • Assumes any abnormalities in thought and behaviour (output) are a result of dysfunctional thought processing
  • Information that is inputted is either not processed correctly or is wrongly interpreted
• What is the egocentric bias?

  • A critical characteristic of delusional thinking is the degree to which the individual perceives themselves as the central component in events that are neutral to them, leading them to jump to false conclusions about things
• What is meta-representation dysfunction?

  • Frith et al. (1992) identified meta-representation which is the cognitive ability to reflect on our behaviours and thoughts, allowing us insight into our own intentions and goals
  • Dysfunction of this would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than other people
  • Explains hallucinations of hearing voices and delusions like thought insertion (experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others)
• What is central control dysfunction?

  • Frith also suggested issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses as while we do things, there are multiple possible triggers and thoughts that come to mind
  • People with schizophrenia are unable to suppress thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts, which may explain derailment of thoughts as each word triggers new associations which they can't repress
• What is one strength of the cognitive explanation?

  • Research support: Stirling et al. (2006) compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with schizophrenia and 30 people without, such as the Stroop task which is naming the font colours of colour words
  • Found that schizophrenics took 2x as long on average to do this, suggesting a clearly impaired cognitive system in people with schizophrenia
• What is one limitation of the cognitive explanation?

  • Proximal origins: the explanation focuses on what is happening now to produce the symptoms, distinct from distal explanations that focus on the initial causes of the condition like the genetic and family dysfunction explanations
  • There is no clear or well-addressed link between genetic variation or childhood trauma and problems with cognitive functions, meaning these theories can only provide partial explanations for schizophrenia
• What is another limitation of the cognitive explanation?

  • Contradictory evidence: patients with brain damage were found to have highly similar cognitive deficits with processes like selective attention, however they do NOT develop schizophrenia
  • Shows a poorly established cause-and-effect, and that other factors like bio/neurochemistry must play a role in causation
  • There is also uncertainty over whether schizophrenia CAUSES cognitive deficits or vice versa which decreases the theory;s validity - we do not know whether it is a cause or a symptom