COGNITIVE/THOUGHT DISORDER AO3

• Supporting evidence - Stroop Test used by Barch et al on schizophrenic individuals. The results reflected schizophrenics were slower than the control group and made more mistakes which showcases that the attentional filters of schizophrenics are defective.
• Barch et al support for the cognitive explanations and lack of preconscious filters explanation of schizophrenia...


  Reported that schizophrenics have slower response time and made more mistakes on the Stroop test, highlighting that they are unable to filter out non-important information and prioritise the ink colours over the coloured word.
• Against slightly 


  However, this is a laboratory experiment so caution must be used as it is not reflective of real-life situations, so stress levels of schizophrenic patients may have been higher, and therefore they processed information more slowly rather than having issues with their attention filters.
• Refuting evidence - many schizophrenics are already on antipsychotic medication. This is an issue as any research conducted with these individuals may be inaccurate as the antipsychotic medication has a major effect on the brain. It could be argued that the studies lack population validity.
• Further refuting evidence explanation

  It would be unethical and dangerous for researchers to take Schizophrenics of the antipsychotic medicine as it could cause a potential risk of a schizophrenic episode for individuals who have schizophrenia. Therefore, it could be argued that the cognitive explanation is only a partial explanation as any cognitive defects in Schizophrenics could be due to the antipsychotic medication.
• Methodological issue - it is not a comprehensive theory.

  Some researchers criticise the cognitive explanation as only being able to explain cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. Other symptoms of schizophrenia such as issues with movement are not well explained by cognitive explanations.
• The cognitive explanations are criticised for only describing the cognitive deficits thought to underlie symptoms of schizophrenia but do not always explain the origin of the deficits, in other words cognitive theories can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes the symptoms) but not the distal causes (the origin of the conditions).
• Criticism from the methodological issue

  This is a criticism of cognitive explanations as it questions the validity of research into cognitive processing systems as the results could be due to medication and not due to the schizophrenia. To overcome this problem, participants should be taken of medication before they participate in studies to ensure that it does not interfere with the results.