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COGNITIVE EXPLANATION OF SCHIZOPHRENIA - Coggle Diagram
COGNITIVE EXPLANATION OF SCHIZOPHRENIA
EXPLANATION
Cognitive explanations only some of the characteristics
Cognitive deficits help to explain impairments in thought processes- perception, memory and attention
The cognitive explanation explains schizophrenia in terms of malfunctions in cognitive systems such as perception, attention and memory
Schizophrenic individuals have cognitive biases- notice, pay attention or remember certain information better than other
COGNITIVE TRIAD
Cognitive distortions or erroneous thinking patters can influence perception and interpretations
Emotional responses influence our communication, reactions and decisions
Helps to understand how thoughts, feelings and behaviours interact
Behaviours are responses to stimuli and are influenced by thoughts and feelings
EXPLANING POSITIVE SYMPTOMS
MORRISON (1998)
proposed that maladaptive thinking could explain auditory hallucinations
Sleep deprivation can cause a person with schizophrenia to hear voices in a maladaptive way and results in appraising the voices inappropriately
Most common hallucinations are auditory hallucinations
For example, a sleep deprived individual who is suffering from schizophrenia may believe that the critical voice inside their head is the devil
Hallucinations are perceptions that are not real and can manifest in many forms
FRITH (1979)
believes that schizophrenia is the result of a faulty attention system- the positive systems
Preconscious thoughts are thoughts that occur without awareness
The best fit of information goes to the consciousness, allowing us to make sense of it
Preconscious thoughts contain information from our senses that would normally be filtered
Our senses receive information from the environment and we interpret it in our preconscious
Schizophrenia is the result of a breakdown in the individuals thought filtering process
EXPLANING NEGATIVE SYMPTOMS
BECK (2008)
Individuals with schizophrenia possesses dysfunctional beliefs about themselves, their performance and their ability to experience pleasure
Negative symptoms can be explained by the idea of the cognitive triad
EVALUATION
SUPPORTING RESEARCH
BARCH ET AL (1999)
compared performance on the Stroop test of people with schizophrenia and people without
They found that those with schizophrenia were slower and made more mistakes on the Stroop test
They concluded that this was evidence that those with schizophrenia couldn’t filter information as effectively
This supports Frith's idea that attentional filters with schizophrenia are defective
REFUTING EVIDENCE
NOT A COMPREHENSIVE THEORY
Cognitive explanation can only explain cognitive symptoms
Other symptoms such as movements are not explained well by cognitive explanations
Cognitive theories explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms) but not the distal causes (origins of the condition)
INTERGRATED MODEL OF SZ
HOWES AND MURRAY
describe an integrated model of schizophrenia which proposes that genes or certain factors in life (birth complications) combine with life events or social stressors (poverty) and this provokes the dopamine system into releasing dopamine
Dopamine secretion cause problems with cognitive processing- delusions and hallucinations
Individuals with schizophrenia enter a vicious circle as the stress induced by experiencing these symptoms prompt the release of more dopamine
This type of model makes the cognitive explanation insufficient