Explaining positive symptoms

• Precocious filters 


  information from the environment such as other noises are filtered out before the information needed is then processed by the brain
• Hallucinations are a common symptom of schizophrenia, and one of its defining characteristics. The most common type of hallucinations are auditory hallucinations
• Attention deficit theory

  Our brains are constantly receiving information vast amounts of information from the world around us. if we tried to attend to all of the possible information in our environment, we would soon become overwhelmed and unable to function. All of the information from our environment enters our preconscious
• Frith (1979) proposed that the positive symptoms of schizophrenia could be explained by difficulties in inhibiting preconscious content due to a breakdown of the thought filtering process
• Morrison (1998) proposed that maladaptive thinking could offer an explanation as to why individuals suffer with auditory hallucinations. Morrison suggests that triggers such as stress, sleep deprivation and even certain drugs can lead to some individuals with schizophrenia to not only hear voices but hear them in a maladaptive way. This can result in individuals appraising the voices inappropriately