Psych · Foundations — cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology for psychiatry
Also known as Information processing psychiatry · Attention memory executive function · Working memory Baddeley · Cognitive biases psychopathology · Social cognition schizophrenia · MATRICS cognitive domains · Dual-process heuristics · Cognitive models CBT foundations
Exam-exhaustive fellowship reference on cognitive psychology for psychiatrists — attention networks, working and long-term memory, executive functions, dual-process judgment, cognitive models of depression and panic, overgeneral memory, schizophrenia cognition and social cognition, bedside assessment, CBT and remediation applications. FRANZCP-primary, globally tagged.
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Red flags
- Fluctuating inattention and acute confusion are delirium until proven otherwise — not 'anxiety concentration'
- Elective cognitive therapy tasks defer when acute suicide, violence, mania, psychosis emergency, or medical instability dominates
- Multi-step discharge plans without capacity-aware supports fail when working memory/executive load is high
- Attributing vocational failure solely to 'poor motivation' when verbal memory and processing speed are impaired
- Safety behaviours left intact prevent disconfirmation of catastrophic threat beliefs in panic and related anxiety
- Single bedside screen without education, language, sensory, and baseline context over-diagnoses deficit
Meet the patient — the man who "got better" but cannot hold a job
A 32-year-old with schizophrenia has been on a stable clozapine dose for a year. The voices are "just background now". The assertive team has discharged him. He landed a warehouse job last month and lost it inside three weeks.[12][15]
His mother is furious: "He just does not try." His case manager writes "poor motivation, limited insight". The question that decides his next five years is not whether his psychosis has improved — it has — but is this laziness, or is this cognition?[12][15]
This page answers that question, and every viva stem that asks why a patient whose symptoms "settled" still cannot live independently.[13][14]
References15ShowHide
- [1]Miller GA The magical number seven plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information Psychol Rev, 1956.PMID 13310704
- [2]Baddeley A Working memory: looking back and looking forward Nat Rev Neurosci, 2003.PMID 14523382
- [3]Cowan N The magical number 4 in short-term memory: a reconsideration of mental storage capacity Behav Brain Sci, 2001.PMID 11515286
- [4]Posner MI, Petersen SE The attention system of the human brain Annu Rev Neurosci, 1990.PMID 2183676
- [5]Miyake A, Friedman NP, Emerson MJ, et al. The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "Frontal Lobe" tasks: a latent variable analysis Cogn Psychol, 2000.PMID 10945922
- [6]Tversky A, Kahneman D Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases Science, 1974.PMID 17835457
- [7]Beck AT Thinking and depression. II. Theory and therapy Arch Gen Psychiatry, 1964.PMID 14159256
- [8]Beck AT The evolution of the cognitive model of depression and its neurobiological correlates Am J Psychiatry, 2008.PMID 18628348
- [9]Clark DM A cognitive approach to panic Behav Res Ther, 1986.PMID 3741311
- [10]Eysenck MW, Derakshan N, Santos R, Calvo MG Anxiety and cognitive performance: attentional control theory Emotion, 2007.PMID 17516812
- [11]Williams JM, Barnhofer T, Crane C, et al. Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder Psychol Bull, 2007.PMID 17201573
- [12]Green MF What are the functional consequences of neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia? Am J Psychiatry, 1996.PMID 8610818
- [13]Nuechterlein KH, Barch DM, Gold JM, et al. Identification of separable cognitive factors in schizophrenia Schizophr Res, 2004.PMID 15531405
- [14]Green MF, Penn DL, Bentall R, et al. Social cognition in schizophrenia: an NIMH workshop on definitions, assessment, and research opportunities Schizophr Bull, 2008.PMID 18184635
- [15]Keefe RS, Harvey PD Cognitive impairment in schizophrenia Handb Exp Pharmacol, 2012.PMID 23027411