SZ 05 Cognitive dysfunction

Explain Frith's cognitive explanation of thought disorder / derailment in schizophrenia (3)

* Central control dysfunction

* Failure to suppress irrelevant stimuli and focus attention appropriately

* Leads to thought disorder / derailment of speech

Explain how Stirling's study supports Frith's cognitive explanation of thought disorder / derailment in schizophrenia (3)

* SZs with thought disorder took 2X as long as non- SZs...

* ... to complete Stroop task

* Task involves ignoring the (irrelevant to the task) word and identifying the colour.

Explain Frith's cognitive explanation of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia (3)

* Metarepresentation dysfunction

* Failure to identify thoughts as ones own leads to auditory hallucinations

* i.e., hear own thoughts and mistake them for external stimuli

Explain how Bentall's study supports Frith's cognitive explanation of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia (3)

* SZs with auditory hallucinations made more errors when recalling...

* ... if they or researcher came up an item within a category

* i.e., fail to distinguish own from others' thoughts.

Using examples, explain how extraneous variables could affect performance in quasi- experiments such as Stirling's Stroop study and Bentall's 'category + example' study (4)

* Weak task performance could due to other symptoms

* e.g., avolition could reduce motivation / engagement with Stroop task

* Weak task performance could be due to other cognitive deficits

* e.g., weak working memory could lead to poor initial processing and recall in Bentall's task