Cognitive explanation:

• Dysfunctional thinking


  Associated with several types of dysfunctional thought processing, and these can provide possible explanations for schizophrenia as a whole

  • Characterised by disruption to normal thought processing
  • We can see this in many of its symptoms
  • Reduced thought processing in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms, whilst reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri is associated with hallucinations (Simon et al)
  • This lower-than-usual level of information processing suggests that cognition is likely to be impaired.
• Metarepresentation dysfunction

  Frith et al identified two kinds of dysfunctional thought processes

  1. metarespresentation

  • The cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour
  • Allows us insight into our own intentions
  • Allows us to interpret the actions of others
  • Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else
  • This would explain hallucinations of hearing voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others)
• 2. Central control dysfunction

  • Issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions
  • Speech poverty and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts
  • IE: people with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts because each word triggers associations, and the person cannot suppress automatic responses to these.