Cognitive Explanations

Q: Neufeld (1978) - Comparing Cognitive Processes

**Neufeld (1978)** investigated cognitive deficits in schizophrenics.

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Cognitive Explanations for Schizophrenia

Cognitive explanations of schizophrenia focus on the role of mental processes, such as several types of abnormal information processing which we can identify in many of the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Christopher Frith et al. (1992)

Christopher Frith et al. (1992) identified two kinds of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms:
- Central control.
- Meta-representation.
Central control refers to the ability to suppress automatic responses while performing deliberate actions.
Malfunction of central control could explain disorganised speech and thought because the patient is unable to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.

Meta-representation

Meta-representation refers to the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviours.
This cognitive ability gives individuals insight into their own intentions and goals, as well as the ability to interpret the reactions of others.

Dysfunction of meta-representation

Dysfunction of meta-representation would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than somebody else.
Dysfunction of meta-representation would explain hallucinations, such as hearing voices and delusions, as internal thoughts believed to have originated in the environment.
It would also explain other symptoms, such as thought insertion, where patients believe that others have projected thoughts into their mind.

Criticisms of cognitive explanations

There remain problems with cognitive explanations of schizophrenia.
Although links between schizophrenia and faulty cognitions are clear, cognitive explanations do little to explain the causes of the disorder.

Support for Cognitive Explanations

There is strong support for the proposal that information is processed differently in the mind of schizophrenia sufferers.

Stirling et al. (2006)

Stirling at al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls.
They compared them on a range of cognitive tasks, like the Stroop test.

Results of the Stroop test

In the Stroop test, participants are asked to name the colour of the ink that a word (naming a different colour) is written in. Participants need to suppress the impulse to read the word to complete the task.
Patients took over twice as long to name the ink colour as the control group. This supports the theory of central control.

Neufeld (1978) - Comparing Cognitive Processes

Neufeld (1978) investigated cognitive deficits in schizophrenics.

Research aim

In an experiment, Neufeld (1978) compared paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics to normal controls on a sentence verification task.
The task permitted separation of times taken for central scanning and comparison operations and for operations associated with response selection and response execution.

Results & conclusion

Results
- Both groups of schizophrenics took the same amount of time as the normal controls for response selection and responses execution. However, both took longer for central scanning and comparison operations.
Conclusion
- Neufeld concluded that the cognitive deficits were in the short term and working memory of the schizophrenics.