Cognitive explanation

• The cognitive explanation emphasises

  -the role of dysfunctional thought processing that is particularly in evidence in those showing the positive symptoms of SZ.
• During the formation of delusions

  -the patient’s interpretation of their experiences is controlled by inadequate information processing.
• A central component of delusional thinking


  is the degree to which the individual sees themselves as central in events (an egocentric bias) and so jumps to conclusions about events.
• This manifests itself in the patients tendency to

  -relate meaningless events to themselves and to arrive at false conclusions (for example thinking that flashing lights are messages for God).
• Hallucinating people with SZ are more likely

  -misattribute the source of self-generating auditory experiences then non-hallucinating people with SZ

  - These errors of thought are not corrected by the disconfirming evidence because people with SZ do not go through the same processes of reality testing as others do.
• Support for the cognitive explanation comes from

  -Myer-Linderberg who found reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex of schizophrenics when they did a task involving working memory.

  -This shows that there is a link betweendysfunctional information processingand schizophrenia
• An issue with the cognitive explanation is that

  -dysfunctional thinking could be a consequence of schizophrenia rather than a cause. This is an issue because it implies that something else causes the schizophrenia in the first place, and it is this factor that then leads to distortions in cognition.
• In support Hemsley (1993) suggested schizophrenics cannot

  -distinguish between information that is already stored and new incoming information.

  -As a result, schizophrenics are subjected to sensory overload and do not know which aspects of a situation to attend to and which to ignore

  -This shows that there is a link between dysfunctional information processing and schizophrenia