This study tested the prediction that dissociative tendencies modulate the impact of a hypnotic induction on cognitive control in different subtypes of highly suggestible individuals. Low suggestible (LS), low dissociative highly suggestible (LDHS), and high dissociative highly suggestible (HDHS) participants completed the Stroop color-naming task in control and hypnosis conditions. The magnitu...

The assessment of hypnotizability has been of longstanding interest to the hypnosis community. Since 1978, three special issues of hypnosis journals have been devoted to the topic of the assessment of hypnotic responsivity (Cohen, 1978-79; Orne, 1979, 1982). Not surprisingly, two of these issues have focused on assessment in the clinical context. Previous editors and guest editors of these spec...

Barabasz, Barabasz, Jensen, Calvin, Trevisan, and Warner (1999) showed that, when subjects are stringently selected for hypnotizability and responses are time locked to events, robust markers of hypnotic responding emerge that reflect alterations in consciousness that correspond to subjects' subjective experiences of perceptual alteration. To further test the Barabasz et al. (1999) hypothesis, ...

Hypnosis is a potentially valuable cognitive tool for neuroimaging studies. However, understandable concern that Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in particular may adversely affect hypnotic procedures remains. Measurements of hypnotic depth and responsiveness to suggestions were taken using a standardized procedure that met all the requirements for functional MRI (fMRI). Testing outside the sca...

We examined two potential correlates of hypnotic suggestibility: dissociation and cognitive inhibition. Dissociation is the foundation of two of the major theories of hypnosis and other theories commonly postulate that hypnotic responding is a result of attentional abilities (including inhibition). Participants were administered the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form...

To clarify whether hypnotically-induced alexia was able to reduce the Stroop effect due to color/word interference, 12 volunteers (6 with high and 6 with low hypnotizability according to Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale Form C) underwent a Stroop test consisting of measuring, both in basal conditions and during post-hypnotic alexia, the reaction times (RT) at appearance of a colored word ...

In hypnosis, subjects respond to suggestions for imaginative experiences that can involve alterations in conscious perception, memory, and action. However, these phenomena occur most profoundly in those subjects who are highly hypnotizable. The chapter reviews a number of these phenomena, including posthypnotic amnesia; hypnotic analgesia; hypnotic deafness, blindness, and agnosia; and emotiona...

Hypnosis is associated with profound changes in conscious experience and is increasingly used as a cognitive tool to explore neuropsychological processes. Studies of this sort typically employ suggestions following a hypnotic induction to produce changes in perceptual experience and motor control. It is not clear, however, to what extent the induction procedure serves to facilitate suggested ph...

This preliminary study explored the relationship between imagery vividness before and during a hypnotic phenomenological assessment procedure, the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory-Hypnotic Assessment Procedure (PCI-HAP), while also assessing trance (hypnoidal) state effects and several other variables. The PCI-HAP allows the assessment of trance state effects associated with hypnotism t...

The change in the level of oxytocin and cortisol was tested in the participants of hypnotic interaction in standardised laboratory sessions with healthy volunteers. Pre to posthypnosis changes of oxitocin and cortisol were related to the hypnotic susceptibility of Ss, and to relational experiences reposted by subjects and hypnotists on several paper and pencil tests (AIM, DIH, s-EMBU). Results ...