Cognitive and Biological Explanations for Schizophrenia

Question 1

What did Frith (1979) suggest?

Answer 1

Faulty attention systems.

Harder to filter out unimportant thoughts and means you’re v aware of minor cog. processes

Leads to +ve symptoms

Question 2

What did Helmsley (1993,2005) suggest?

Answer 2

Poor integration of schemas.

Unable to predict hat will happen next or understand surroundings.

Past experiences stored in LTM are disordered, so can’t make sense of simple tasks etc

Question 3

What did Bentall (2007) suggest?

Answer 3

Patients can’t distinguish between self-generated thoughts and external stimuli

Leads to hallucinations as self-generated thoughts seem alien

Question 4

What did Blakemore et al (2000) find?

Answer 4

Voice-hearing psychotic patients were more likely to be able to tickle themselves compared to non-psychotic patients.

Suggests ppl with source monitoring errors don’t understand their own intentions.