cognitive

• what is the main assumption

  the symptoms of schizophrenia are due to faulty thinking. many emphasise the role of neurobiology in explaining the cause of faulty thought processes. rthey also consider the role of the environment and how a fault in the brain can make them more vulnerable. fault in the brain is also probably genetic
• Hemsley - sensory overload

  schizophrenics have difficulty filtering out sensory information. they quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of sensory information experienced. their responses are illogical and may focus on things a non-sufferer wouldn't

  they struggle to utilise schemas when taking on new situations whilst someone without schizophrenia will access schemas to make sense of an experience. schizophrenics can't do this and become overwhelmed in social situations, causing delusional thinking
• Frith - Metarepresentation and central control

  metarepresentation is being able to reflect on thoughts and experiences

  positive schizophrenic symptoms are thought to be caused by problems with meta-representation. sufferers are unable to distinguish between external speech and internal thoughts. they think that their inner voice is an external person. they think thoughts are being put there by someone else rather than being created by them.

  these problems are thought to be caused by a disconnection between frontal areas of the brain [action] and back areas [perception]
• O'carroll

  cognitive impairment is found in 75% of schizophrenics, particularly in memory, attention, motor skills, executive function and intelligence. these cognitive impairments often pre-dated illness onset and didn't occur due to substance abuse. this shows a link between biology and cognition
• Knoblich 


  studied schizophrenics alongside non-schizophrenics.

  asked them to draw circles on an electronic pad connected to the computor and asked them to monitor the relationship between their hand movements and the consequences.

  schizophrenics found it difficult to identify a mis-match. this showed cognitive impairment to self monitor, supporting difficulty with metarepresentation
• Frith - central control

  this involves being able to prevent automatic responses and instead perform actions based on concious intent. negative schizophrenic symptoms, like disorganised thinking, are thought to be due to problems with central control. they can't suppress automatic responses like normal people. e.g. they would struggle with the stroop test
• Liddle and Morris

  found that people with schizophrenia perform poorly on the stroop test as they can't suppress the desire to read the word
• Stirling et al-

  studied 30 schizophrenics and found that they took twice as long to do the stroop test
• Joshua - Hayling sentence completion test

  compared 39 schizophrenics and 40 bipolar disorder patients and 44 healthy control participants. found that schizophrenics have a slower response time and slower suppression of innappropriate responses
• genetic links

  research suggests there may be a genetic link for faulty cognitive thinking. for example, memory and attention disorders can run in first degree relatives, and its this that causes schizophrenia. however, it can't explain why some develop schizophrenia and others don't.
• the cognitive explanation now has a lot of scientific credibility due to neuroscience. brain scans produce empirical data
• cognitive theories without empirical evidence are limited as they don't explain the causes of schizophrenia and simply describe the symptoms. the theories need to be linked to biology to explain what leads to cognitive dysfunction
• symptoms labelled as schizophrenia may just be different thinking