schizophrenia - individual: cognitive Flashcards
(3 cards)
reductionist
P: One weakness of the explanation is that it is highly reductionist due to it only acknowledging cognitive impairments causing schizophrenia.
E: Other researchers like Hopes and Murray (2014) suggest an integrated model where there is biological factors that interact with cognitive factors, such as genes interacting with social pressures to provoke the dopamine system to produce the high level dopamine found in the aetiology of schizophrenics
T: Therefore, by cognitive explanations not recognising the role of biology in causing schizophrenia, it can lead to an incomplete explanation and therefore ineffective treatments that prove the explanation to have very limited useful application when compared to other treatments (such as anti-psychotics which are much more commonly prescribed to treat individuals with schizophrenia - rather than CBT).
C: Tarrier et al. (2000) found that combining CBT with antipsychotic medication led to greater reductions in symptoms and fewer relapses in individuals with schizophrenia compared to medication alone. Suggesting that while cognitive explanations may not fully address biological factors, cognitive interventions like CBT that come from cognitive explanations still play a valuable role in improving treatment outcomes, and shouldn’t be discarded
supporting evidence
P: One strength of the cognitive explanation is that it has high validity and reliability due to the supporting research that verifies cognitive explanations, such as pre-conscious filters
E: research from Deanna Barch et al (1999) who compared performance on a Stroop test between SZ and control. Finding SZ was slower and had more mistakes, suggesting that they can’t filter information as effectively.
T: Therefore it supports the explanation of SZ having a lack of preconscious filters due to their struggle in perceiving the information, proving the validity of this explanation and adding reliability
C: However performance on cognitive tasks like the Stroop test can be influenced by various factors such as motivation, medication status, or anxiety, which may not be fully controlled for in research, thus impacting the reliability of these findings. Therefore, while cognitive deficits are evident, they may not be the sole or primary cause of the disorder, reducing the overall validity and generalisability of this explanation.
