Psychological explanation schzio

Question 1

What does the family dysfunction explanation suggest about schizophrenia?

Answer 1

It claims schizophrenia symptoms result from unhealthy family relationships, such as high expressed emotion, criticism, or conflict—creating stress that may trigger the disorder.

Question 2

What is Frith’s (1979) cognitive explanation for schizophrenia?

Answer 2

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).

Question 3

What is a key criticism of the family dysfunction explanation?

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

How does Stirling (2006) support cognitive explanations of schizophrenia?

Answer 4

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.