No abstract

The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale was administered twice to 152 subjects in small groups. The interval between testings ranged from 2 wk. to 3 mo. The three suggestibility dimensions remained relatively stable across testings. For both testings scores on the Objective dimension (CURSS: O) were substantially higher than those on the Objective-Involuntariness dimension (CURSS: OI). This indicates that many subjects who “passed” suggestions in terms of overt response, rated their responses as primarily voluntary rather than involuntary. All three suggestibility dimensions correlated significantly with expectations for hypnosis and Field's “hypnotic experiences” inventory. However, neither expectancies nor “hypnotic experiences” correlated significantly with the number of “passed” responses rated as primarily voluntary (CURSS: VC, i.e., Voluntary Cooperation scores). Theoretical implications are discussed.

Recently, Kihlstrom found that a suggestion for posthypnotic amnesia produced impairments on episodic but not semantic memory tasks. During amnesia testing, highly and very highly susceptible subjects showed reduced recall for a previously learned word list but no deficits on a word association task designed to elicit the forgotten words as associates. He hypothesized that posthypnotic amnesia involved a dissociation between episodic and semantic components of memory. We tested the alternative hypothesis that Kihlstrom's findings resulted from experimental demands conveyed by the wording of the amnesia suggestion he employed. We found that subjects could be induced to show only episodic impairments (thereby replicating Kihlstrom) or both episodic and semantic impairments (contrary to Kihlstrom) by subtly varying the wording of amnesia suggestions. These findings are inconsistent with a dissociation hypothesis. Instead, they support the notion that hypnotic amnesia is a strategic enactment strongly influenced by expectations generated in the amnesia testing situation.

Subjects underwent either low intensity or high intensity acute focal pressure pain of relatively short duration on a baseline and posttest trial. On the posttest subjects in each intensity condition either engaged in distraction (shadowing letters), attended to sensations (redefinition) or were given no treatment (controls). Distraction was more effective than redefinition at reducing rated pain and at enhancing pain tolerance for subjects in the high intensity condition. Subjects who scored as repressors gave lower pain ratings than sensitizers. Moreover, in the high intensity condition repressors given distraction reported significant increases in pain tolerance while sensitizers given distraction showed no changes in tolerance.

Two experiments assessed adaptation to displacing prisms in hypnotically limbanesthetized subjects. Experiment 1 disconfirmed the hypothesis that the displacement aftereffect is eliminated in limb-anesthetized hypnotic subjects who adapt to prisms in the absence of a visual target. Such subjects showed as large a displacement aftereffect as control subjects who received neither a hypnotic induction procedure nor an anesthesia suggestion. Experiment 2 demonstrated that under some testing conditions hypnotic subjects complied with experimental demands and eliminated the behavioral (but not the perceptual) component of the aftereffect. Theoretical implications are discussed.Subjects who adapt to displacing prisms exhibit a perceptual aftereffect following prism removal. When pointing toward a visual target, they tend to point in the direction opposite to the prism-induced displacement. In several studies Wallace and his associates (Wallace & Garrett, 1973, 1975Wallace & Fisher, 1979) reported that hypnotic suggestions for limb anesthesia administered to highly susceptible subjects eliminated the displacement aftereffect. However, low-susceptible role-playing subjects, instructed to pretend that their arm was anesthetized, showed the displacement aftereffect. Wallace and Garrett (1973) hypothesized that hypnotic limb anesthesia interferes with proprioceptive feedback from the pointing limb and thereby prevents prism adaption. Spanos, Gorassini, and Petrusic (1981) were unable to confirm these results. Instead, they found that highly susceptible hypnotically limbanesthetized subjects, low-susceptible role players, and control subjects who prism adapted without special instructions, all showed large displacement aftereffects. Spanos et al. (1981) hypothesized that the elim-