Sc - Psychological explanations for schizophrenia

Question 1

Cognitive explanations

Answer 1

Cognitive explanations of mental disorders propose that abnormalities in cognitive function are a key component of SZ.

Question 2

Dysfunctional thought processing

Answer 2

Cognitive habits or beliefs that cause the individual to evaluate information inappropriately.

Question 3

Family dysfunction

Answer 3

The presence of problems within a family that contribute to relapse rates in recovering schizophrenics, including lack of warmth between parents and child, dysfunctional communication patterns and parental overprotection.

Question 4

What are the 2 psychological explanations of SZ?

Answer 4

Family dysfunction and cognitive explanations.

Question 5

What are the 2 parts to family dysfunction?

Answer 5

Double bind theory and expressed emotion.

Question 6

Who came up with the double bind theory?

Answer 6

Bateson et al. (1956)

Question 7

What does the double bind theory suggest?

Answer 7

That children who frequently receive contradictory messages from their parents are more likely to develop SZ.

Question 8

Contradictory messages leads to a change in the child’s ability to do what?

Answer 8

The child’s ability to respond to the mother is incapacitated by such contradictions because one message invalidates the other.

Question 9

What do contradictory messages/these interactions prevent?

Answer 9

Prevent the development of an internally coherent construction of reality, and in the long run this manifests itself as schizophrenic symptoms.

Question 10

What is expressed emotion (EE)?

Answer 10

A family communication style in which members of the family of a psychiatric patient talk about that patient in a critical or hostile manner or in a way that indicates emotional over-involvement or over-concern with the patient or their behaviour.

Question 11

What did research by Kuipers et al. (1983) find about expressed emotion?

Answer 11

Found that high EE relatives talk more and listen less.

Question 12

What are high levels of EE most likely to influence?

Answer 12

Relapse rates (i.e. an increase in symptoms).

Question 13

What is the figure for relapse rates of a patient returning to a high EE family compared to a low EE family?

Answer 13

A patient returning to a family with high EE is about 4 times as likely to relapse than a patient who family is low in EE (Linzen et al., 1997).

Question 14

What do the finding of ‘A patient returning to a family with high EE is about 4 times as likely to relapse than a patient who family is low in EE (Linzen et al., 1997)’ suggest about people with SZ?

Answer 14

That they have a lower tolerance for intense environmental stimuli, particularly these intense emotional comments and interactions with family members.

Question 15

It appears that the negative emotional climate in high EE families does what to the patient with SZ

Answer 15

Arouses them and leads to stress beyond their already impaired coping mechanisms, this triggering a schizophrenic episode.

Question 16

A family environment that is relatively supportive and emotionally undemanding might do what to a SZ patient?

Answer 16

May help them to reduce their dependence on antipsychotic medication and help reduce the likelihood of relapse (Noll, 2009).

Question 17

What two symptoms are their cognitive explanations for?

Answer 17

Delusions and hallucinations.

Question 18

What happens during the formation of delusions according to cognitive explanations?

Answer 18

The patient’s interpretations of their experiences are controlled by inadequate information processing.

Question 19

What is a critical characteristic of delusional thinking?

Answer 19

The degree to which an individual perceives him or herself as the central component in events (egocentric bias) and so jumps to conclusions about external events.

Question 20

Where is an egocentric bias manifested and what does this result in?

Answer 20

In the patient’s tendency to relate to relevant events to themselves and consequently arrive at false conclusions.

Question 21

What are muffled voices interpreted as in delusions?

Answer 21

People criticising them.

Question 22

Egocentric bias

Answer 22

The degree to which an individual perceives him or herself as the central component in events (egocentric bias) and so jumps to conclusions about external events.

Question 23

What are flashing lights in delusions a signal from?

Answer 23

God.

Question 24

How are delusions in SZ relatively impervious to reality testing?

Answer 24

The patients are unwilling or unable to consider that they may be wrong (Beck and Rector, 2005). They are considered to have ‘impaired insight’, an inability to recognise cognitive distortions and substitute more realistic explanations for events.

Question 25

What do hallucinating individuals focus excessive attention on?

Answer 25

Auditory stimuli (hypervigilance).

Question 26

What does a hallucinating individual have as a result of focussing excessive attention on auditory stimuli?

Answer 26

They have a higher expectancy for the occurence of a voice than normal individuals.

Question 27

What did Aleman (2001) suggest about hallucination-prone individuals?

Answer 27

Suggest they find it difficult to distinguish between imagery and sensory-based perception.

Question 28

What does the cognitive explanation say is the mechanism for individuals hallucinating?

Answer 28

The inner representation of an idea can override the actual sensory stimulus and produce an auditory image that is every bit as real as the transmission of actual sound.

Question 29

What are hallucinating patients with SZ significantly more likely to do?

Answer 29

Misattribute the source of self-generated auditory experience to external source than are non-hallucinating patients with SZ (Baker and Morrison, 1998).

Question 30

Why aren’t the errors that cause hallucinations corrected by disconfirming evidence?

Answer 30

Because patients with SZ do not go through the same processes of reality testing (such as checking external sources) that others would do.