I will pay for the following essay Schizophrenic Processing. The essay is to be 6 pages with three to five sources, with in-text citations and a reference page.Download file to see previous pages As a

I will pay for the following essay Schizophrenic Processing. The essay is to be 6 pages with three to five sources, with in-text citations and a reference page.

As a result of their 1996 study, Silverstein, Matteson and Knight have concluded that the impairment results from a top-down impairment, specifically "in the ability to utilize contextual information" that acts as a "major factor in schizophrenia patients' perceptual organization difficulties." In their experiment, schizophrenic patients experienced the same level of confusion from a human voice imitating a sheep as that from what they thought was an actual sheep's voice, whereas the control group ceased having confusion once they learned that the voice was actually an animal, instead of a human. It is this lack of ability to adjust to reduction of ambiguity in context that is the basis of their findings.

Because these findings are similar in their relation to perseveration to other studies (Heaton, 1981. Lysaker &amp. Bell, 1994), they do not represent a "leap of faith" nor require unconventional assumptions. Because these findings appear to more closely identify the source of the impairment as an "inability to utilize explicit contextual information" (Silverman et. al., 1996), however, they do add to the general understanding of impairments in top-down processing.

The key measurement in identifying the source of the impairment of top-down processing was the contrast betw...

The control group had a much easier time memorizing the group of numbers, once they knew that the sheep sound was not also madeby a human voice, but was rather the product of an actual sheep. The schizophrenic group, however, did not improve in their ability to memorize the list of numbers, even after the authenticity of the sheep was made clear. The definitions of these groups within the testing population were made clear, as were the criteria for statistical and clinical significance. The definitions of terms, and of the handling of the experiment, are sufficiently clear to make the process easily duplicable.

The Silverman claim about top-down processing generates a significant need for further research. The authors note a need for aid in "determining if an auditory perceptual organization deficit is as specific to schizophrenia as its visual counterpart appears to be" (1996), as well as an analysis as to whether the perceptual organizational deficit is connected to one or more of the specific symptoms of schizophrenia. Because of this need for further research, the Silverman claim remains at the "descriptive" level of power. It does not speak toward influence of outcomes, or anything approaching prediction or control - however, it does permit discriminations in experience and identify specific relationships in top-down processing impairment. For their claim to be rejected, a control group would have to react to the identification of the stimulus' context in a much more similar fashion to the schizophrenia group than did the two groups in their study.