Hypnotic deafness: a cross‐paradigm analysis

Abstract

This study compared responses to a deafness suggestion amongst subjects administered one of three conditions: hypnosis and suggestion (i.e. reals), simulating instructions (i.e. simulators), or the suggestion alone without hypnosis (i.e. cognitives). Reals and simulators were administered a hypnotic induction, followed by a unilateral, left-ear deafness suggestion and the cognitive group was given the unilateral deafness suggestion without a hypnotic induction. All subjects were administered the Stenger Test of Audition (Stenger, 1907) during the deafness trial, and again on a final post-deafness trial. The Stenger Test is designed to assess the degree and veracity of deafness reports. Reported changes in deafness levels were indistinguishable amongst high-reals, low-cognitives and high-cognitives; all three of these groups reported lower levels of deafness compared to the simulating group. The latter demonstrated a pattern of response consistent with faking deafness, a response for which the Stenger Test is designed to measure. The findings lend support to the hypothesis that deafness does not uniquely characterize highly suggestible hypnotized subjects. In addition, the differences between reals and simulators reflect contextual demands on real subjects to report their deafness experience accurately. Key words: faking, hypnosis, hypnotic deafness, pseudohypacusis, simulation, Stenger Test Hypnotic deafness: a cross-paradigm analysisHypnotic negative hallucinations are amongst the most dramatic of all hypnotic phenomena. For example, in a typical demonstration of auditory negative hallucinations, subjects will receive a suggestion that they cannot hear a sound that is presented to them. Studies to assess the validity of negative hallucinations have, however, been inconclusive and the overall pattern of findings has been both conflicting and ambiguous (Perlini, Haley and Buczel, 1998). Difficulties in the interpretation of these studies have included small sample sizes, failures to control for simple changes in attention deployment and failures to test for suggestion effects in the absence of hypnosis. Also, some hypnotic subjects who report profound negative hallucinations fail to show the predicted electrophysiological changes (Perlini, Spanos and Jones, 1996).Theoretical formulations for reports of hypnotic deafness abound. They include:• dissociative control or the rejection of information at one level of awareness whilst simultaneously registered outside of awareness (Bowers, 1983);