Cognitive explanations

• Dysfunctional thought processing


  metacognition is the ability to think about and reflect on one's own thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Metacognitive dysfunction may explain some symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations e.g. an inability of schizophrenic patients to recognise their thoughts as their own may explain hearing voices. They attribute their own thoughts to some external source outside their mind.
• Cognitive Biases


  positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions, can be explained as a result of cognitive biases e.g. bias may mean a schizophrenic person interprets the ordinary actions of other people as sinister, supporting their delusion that they are a victim of a conspiracy or that people are trying to harm them.
• AO3 - practical application

  cognitive explanations have been used to develop effective therapies for treating schizophrenia, such as CBT
• AO3-other factors

  many people have the cognitive biases and distortions associated with schizophrenia and yet don't develop schizophrenia. This suggests that cognitive explanations alone are too reductionist
• AO3-describes but doesn't explain

  cognitive theories simply describe the thought processes of schizophrenia but don't explain why they occur in the first place