cognitive explanations - dysfunctional thought processing

• What is cognitive explanation of schizophrenia?

  Explaining schizophrenia thorough disruptions to normal mental processes (delusions and hallucinations) suggesting impaired cognition and dysfunction information processing
• Frith et al (1992)

  Identified two kinds of dysfunctional thought processing(DTP) :

  Meta-representation dysfunction Central control dysfunction
• What is dysfunctional thought processing?

  DTP: Atypical (unusual) information processing which produces maladaptive (abnormal) effects
• Metarepresentation

  Meta - to reference oneself.

  Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on our own thoughts, behaviours & goals as well those of others. If the ability is disrupted (metarepresentation dysfunction) one can no longer recognise their own thoughts and actions as their own. This can lead to auditory hallucinations and experience of having thoughts placed in our minds by others (delusions)
• Central control

  The cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses & perform deliberate actions instead. This is impaired in schizophrenia sufferers which can lead to thought disorder which can be expressed as disorganised speech and writing. This is because unwanted impulses and associations during thought and communication cannot be stopped
• Stirling et al (2005) - strength for central control


  Carried out the Stroop task on schizophrenics. Stroop test - naming the ink colour of colour words. Compared 30 schizophrenic patients with 30 controls and got them to do a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop task.

  Required ability to suppress impulse to read word and focus on saying the colour ink instead. Schizophrenic patients took over twice as long to name the ink colour compared to the control group.
• Bowie and Harvey (2006) - strength of cognitive explanation


  Found evidence that cognitive impairments were not only a core feature of schizophrenia but pre-date the onset of the disorder suggesting that cognitive factors may indeed cause schizophrenia
• Knoblich et al (2004) - strength of metarepresentation


  Asked 27 schizophrenic patients and 23 non-schizophrenic patients to continuously draw circles at medium pace on a writing pad connected to a PC monitor to measure the relationship between hand movements and visual consequences. Schizophrenics had an impaired ability to detect mismatch in screen vs the self movement. Cognitive ability to self monitor may be core in Sz
• Unclear cognitive mechanisms - limitation of cognitive explanation

  Cognitive theories do not explain what led to the cognitive dysfunctions seen in schizophrenia. Cognitive theories can only ever explain the proximal origins of the condition (what’s causing current symptoms) but not the distal causes(the origins of the disorder). May be forced to consider biological explanations as cognitive explanations cannot explain the cause of the disorder
• Lab setting - limitation of cognitive explanation


  Many strengths of the cognitive explanation come from lab studies. Lab setting = low ecological validity∴ difficult to generalise these controlled results to how schizophrenics actually process information in real life situations