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E R Hilgard

Publications and source records attributed to E R Hilgard.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

Hypnotic deafness: a psychophysical study of responses to tone intensity as modified by hypnosis.

Hypnotic deafness was suggested for 1000 Hz tones presented in random orders at seven intensities between 17 and 70 db. Subjects were 70 college students stratified into four levels of hypnotic susceptibility, ranging from low to high. Four conditions were presented within a single session. Two conditions tested normal hearing, one in waking and one in hypnosis; two tested reported loudness of the tones as reduced by hypnotic suggestion. The method of magnitude estimation was employed. Hearing reduction was found to correlate .59 with hypnotic susceptibility in the total sample. Few high hypnotizables reduced their hearing to zero; their mean residual hearing during the deafness conditions was 55% of normal. Power functions for the relationship between tone intensity and magnitude estimates for conditions of normal hearing and deafness were found to be relatively parallel and orderly, differing primarily in intercept value. Order effect anomalies are discussed. The "hidden observer" method showed that for 4 of the 70 subjects the covert hearing was found to be at least 20% greater than that reported overtly within hypnotic deafness and approached normal hearing. As in our previous hypnotic analgesia research, not all subjects who reduced their hearing significantly gave subsequent covert reports which differed from reported overt hearing. Discussion is given for evidence of two levels of information processing during hypnotically suggested perceptual distortions.

Audiometry

Failure of the opiate antagonist naloxone to modify hypnotic analgesia.

Hypnotic analgesia in some respects resembles opiate analgesia. We tested the hypothesis that some features of hypnotic analgesia are mediated through neuronal pathways activating specific opiate receptors in brain. The opiate antagonist naloxone had no effect on hypnotic analgesia in three subjects. Thus, the hypothesis was not confirmed.

Female

Visual imagery and the discrimination of differences between altered pictures simultaneously and successively presented.

Ten 'good' visual imagers and ten 'poor' imagers, representing the upper and lower halves of an unselected sample of adult volunteers, were given a task of detecting differences between altered pictures presented in pairs, either simultaneously or successively. Performance was measured by reaction time. 'Good' imagers reacted faster than 'poor' imagers, and the mode of presentation (simultaneous v. successive) did not affect their performances. 'Poor' imagers, on the other hand, reacted significantly slower when the pictures compared were presented successively. The results suggest that self-rated visual imagery can be used to predict the successful recall of visual information required in a discrimination task.

Adult

Hypnosis.

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Acupuncture Therapy