Psychological explanations of schizophrenia

We've now finished our look at the psychological explations for schizophrenia. There are lots but we focused on the following, and you should make sure you have notes on these:

• The psychodynamic explanation
• The cognitive explanation - there are lots of these but we only looked at the attention-processing explanation. You only need one.
• Family dysfunction models - we looked at expressed emotion (EE) and double binds
• Labelling theory including a look at Rosenhan's study ('Being sane in insane places')

As the biological explanations for schizophrenia (particularly the dopamine hypothesis) are so strong, the diathesis-stress model is crucial in incorporating any psychological explanations. The adoption study by Tienari et al (1994) is a really nice study in demonstrating the mix of nature and nurture involved in 'causing' schizophrenia. This is found in the middle of this big ppt containing all the above explanations. 

How does childhood influence adult romantic relationships?

There is some fairly strong evidence for children with secure attachments with their primary care givers growing into adults with secure romantic relationships, with less happy futures ahead of infants who form insecure avoidant or resisntant/ambivalent attachments. The debate is essentially nature vs nurture - the 'continuity hypothesis' is on the nurture side; it is Bowlby's view that infants learn an Internal Working Model of relationships during the critical period in the first two years of their life. However, it could be that they were born that way - the 'temperament hypothesis'.

Here is the presentation, but we only really used the first slide on Monday - your homework is to complete your notes on these and bring them along next Tuesday:

1. Outline Bowlby’s evolutionary theory of attachment. (two sentences max) 
2. Describe the procedures and findings of the strange situation. (two sentences max) 
3. Describe the procedures, findings and conclusions of the ‘Love Quiz’. 
4. What is the ‘continuity’ explanation for this? 
5. What alternative explanations exist? 
6. How strong is the evidence for continuity overall?

Breakdown of romantic relationships

Today we discussed Duck's (also known as Rollie & Duck's) stage-model for the dissolution (or breakdown) of romantic relationships.

Here is the presentation on theories of maintenance (which can also be used to explain breakdown) and Duck's breakdown theory.

Here is a sheet giving more detail on Duck's theory with some questions relating to its evaluation.

We looked at an example answer for this question:
"Discuss one theory of the maintenance of romantic relationships and one theory of the breakdown of romantic relationships." (8 marks + 16 marks).

Homework is to complete this for Monday.

Psychology book club

Psychology book club meets next on Monday 21st Jan (postponed from Mon 14th). We have been reading 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre - I have a few copies left so see me if you want to join in this week.

Our next book will be 'Opening Skinner's Box' by Lauren Slater, an investigation of the twentieth century through a series of ten fascinating, witty and sometimes shocking accounts of its key psychological experiments. These include classics from the AS and A2 course, Milgram, Zimbardo, Harlow & Rosenhan, and many more. Well worth a read for any A'level psychologist.

1.30pm, Monday 21st Jan, R23, tea & cake provided.

Mrs Watson

Schizophrenia essay

A reminder of the current homework essay on schizophrenia: 

'Discuss issues associated with the classification and diagnosis of schizophrenia' (8+16 marks)

I know that lots of people have exams at the moment but this still needs to be done - deadlines have been extended. I think this is the trickiest area of the schizophrenia spec so it will be well worth your while preparing this essay.

Neurochemical and neuroanatomical explanations of schizophrenia

Today we continued our examination of the biological explanations of schizophrenia with a look at the dopamine hypothesis and the neuroanatomical theories. The ppt is here (scroll down).
Bear in mind that no one theory is going to be satisfactory. Schizophrenia has large between-patient and within-patient differences, virtually all schizophrenics are on long-term antipsychotic medication, and there are big questions over cause and effect - does the increased dopamine (or increased ventricle size) lead to the schizophrenia? Or vice versa?