psychological / cognitive explanation

what is an assumption of the cognitive explanation of schizophrenia

That people suffering with schizophrenia have difunctional thought processes

describe / outline the theory attention deficit theory

they believe schizophrenia is due to faulty attention system unable to filter preconscious thoughts and gives too much significance to the information that would usually be filtered therefore overloading the mind. This accounts for positive symptoms like hallucinations/ delusions

describe / outline the central control

central control is our ability to suppress and override automatic action and speech and make deliberate actions to achieve goals. This is believed to be faulty in those who have schizophrenia. This is thought to be behind the delusions and speech poverty as they are unable not to immediately suppresses there thoughts verbalising them.

who came up with these 

firth

describe and outline meta representation

This is the ability to identify your thoughts and actions as your own by paying attention. Fault in this system means that they feel like there coming from outside force.

One strength is evidence in support

Stirling et al conducted the Stroop test on 30 patients with schizophrenia and 18 controls ps. This test involves naming the colour of the ink the word is written in without saying the word. This is difficult as there is a desire to say the word we read. He found that it took ps with schizophrenia twice as long as the control group to name the word. This suggest that they have dysfunctional processing especially related to the central control