Psychological explanations

Question 1

What is metarepresentation dsyfunction?

Answer 1

• Frith identified two dsyfunctional thought processes
• metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour. This allows us to have insight into our own actions and thoughts
• Dsyfunction in metarepresentation can lead to the inability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being ourselves rather than someone eleses.
• This can explain hallucinations of hearing voices and delusional thoughts like insertion (having thoughts projected into the mind by others)

Question 2

What is central control dsyfunction?

Answer 2

Frith identified issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions

For example, speech poverty and thought disorder can result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts

People with schizophrenia also tend to experience derailment of thoughts because each word triggers associations and the person can not suppress automatic responses to these

Question 3

What is dysfunctional thinking?

Answer 3

• A cognitive explanation that focuses on the role of mental processes
• schizophrenia is characterised by disrupts to normal thought processing.
• Reduced thought processing in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms
• Reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri is linked to hallucinations.

Question 4

What are the three family dsyfunction theories?

Answer 4

• The schizophrenogenic mother
• Double blind theory
• Expressed emotion

Question 5

Explain the schizophrenogenic mother theory?

Answer 5

• Fromm - Reichmann proposed a psychodynamic explanation and noted that paitents spoke about their childhoods and a schizophrenogenic mother
• This schizophrenogenic mother is cold, rejecting and controlling and tend to create a climate of tension and secrecy
• This causes distrust which develops into paranoid delusions

Question 6

Who created the schizophrenogenic mother theory?

Answer 6

Frieda Fromm - Reichmann

Question 7

Who created the double bind theory?

Answer 7

Gregory Bateson

Question 8

What is the double blind theory?

Answer 8

• Bateson emphasised the role of communication style within a family
• The developing child finds themselves trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing, they recieve mixed messages about what this is and feel unable to comment on the unfairness of the situation or seek clarification
• When they get it wrong, the child is punished by withdrawal of love and this leaves them with an understanding that the world is confusing and dangerous
• This is reflected in their symptoms such as disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions
• communication is therefore a risk factor in developing schizophrenia

Question 9

What is expressed emotion?

Answer 9

• This is the level of emotion which is expressed towards a person with schizophrenia by carers who are their family members
• High levels of expressed emotion create stress. This can cause individuals to relapse
• Also, it is a source of stress and can trigger the onset of schizophrenia if a person is vunerable due to their genetic make up
• This is due to the diathesis - stress model

Question 10

What are the elements of expressed emotion?

Answer 10

• verbal criticism of the person, accompanied by violence
• Hostility towards a person, anger and rejection
• Emotional overinvolvement in the life of a person, such as needless self sacrifice

Question 11

Evaluate the family dsyfunction explanations?

Answer 11

S = one strength is that there is evidence that links family dsyfunction to schizophrenia
- Indicators of family dsyfunction include an insecure attachment and exposure to childhood trauma such as abuse
- John read founds adults with schizophrenia are likely to have insecure attachments
- Read also found that 59% of men and 69% of women with schizophrenia have a history of physical or sexual abuse
- Morkved reported that most adults with schizophrenia reported at least one childhood trauma, mostly abuse

L = The explanations lack support
- There is poor evidence for the explanations
- family theories like the sc mother and double blind are all based on clinical observation and an informal assessment of their mothers personalities but no systematic evidence

L = Parent blaming. Linking family dsyfunction to schizophrenia is socially sensitive and can lead to mothers being blamed.

Question 12

Evaluate the cognitive explanations?

Answer 12

S =
- There is research support for dsyfunctional thought processing. Stirling compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with schizophrenia and compared this to a control group
- Tasks like the stroop task where participants have to name the font colours of colour words and have to supress the tendency to read the words instead. As Firth satted wuth the central control theory, people with schizophrenia took twice as long on average to name the font colours. This shows their cognitive processes are impaired

L = One limitation is that they only explain proximal origins of symptoms. Cognitive explanations are proximal as they only explain what is happening now to produce symptoms in comparison to a distal explanation which explains what initially caused the conditions. However, there is an unclear explanation to how distal explanations such as family dsyfunction and genetics lead to problems with metarepresentation and central control. This means they only provide partial explanations