Psychological explanation schzio Flashcards
(4 cards)
What does the family dysfunction explanation suggest about schizophrenia?
It claims schizophrenia symptoms result from unhealthy family relationships, such as high expressed emotion, criticism, or conflict—creating stress that may trigger the disorder.
What is Frith’s (1979) cognitive explanation for schizophrenia?
Frith’s attention deficit theory argues that faulty attention filters allow irrelevant thoughts into consciousness, causing cognitive overload—explaining positive symptoms like hallucinations and delusions of control (linked to meta-representation deficits).
What is a key criticism of the family dysfunction explanation?
It is socially sensitive—blaming families may cause guilt and added stress. Biological evidence (e.g., Gottesman’s genetic concordance and Leucht on neurotransmitters) offers a less blaming, more scientific explanation.
How does Stirling (2006) support cognitive explanations of schizophrenia?
In the Stroop test, schizophrenia patients took twice as long as controls—showing issues with central control (suppressing automatic responses). Supports the idea that schizophrenia involves dysfunctional cognitive processing.
