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Biomedical subjects

I Kirsch

Publications and source records attributed to I Kirsch.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1999

Expectancy and suggestibility: are the effects of environmental enhancement due to detection?

This study replicated the effect of Wickless and Kirsch's experiential expectancy manipulation, in which lights and music from hidden sources were used to convince participants that they were responding successfully to suggestions for visual and auditory hallucinations. The hypothesis that the effect is mediated by detection of the manipulation was tested by providing some participants with cues that their experiences were due to actual changes in the physical environment rather than to their responses to suggestion. This hypothesis was not confirmed. A significant effect on suggestibility was obtained only among participants not given cues aimed at enabling detection of the manipulation, and among those provided with the cues, suspicion of the manipulation was negatively correlated with response to suggestion.

Environment↗
PubMed1999

Intentional and spontaneous imagery in hypnosis: the phenomenology of hypnotic responding.

Students were given 1 of 2 versions of the Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale (CURSS): (a) the original version, which contains instructions to intentionally imagine goal-directed fantasies, and (b) a modified version, in which instructions for suggestion-related imagery were deleted. Participants were asked to report their goal-directed fantasies and to indicate whether these occurred spontaneously or were generated intentionally. They were also asked whether they had tried intentionally to generate the suggested experience and to indicate whether they had believed that the suggested states of affairs were real (e.g., whether they thought a hallucinated cat really existed). The deletion of instructions for goal-related imagery significantly increased responsiveness to CURSS suggestions. Spontaneous goal-directed imagery was significantly correlated with behavioral response, but intentional imagery was not. Most successful responders tried to generate suggested experiences intentionally, indicated that they could have resisted challenge suggestions if they really wanted to, and reported believing in the reality of suggested ideomotor and challenge experiences but not of cognitive suggestions. Voluntary attempts to generate suggested experiences were correlated with subjective responding.

Female↗
PubMed1999

Brief modification of suggestibility and hypnotic analgesia: too good to be true?

A 10-minute training procedure, based on the Carleton Skill Training Program, has previously been reported to produce substantial increments in responsiveness to hypnotic suggestion. The authors attempted to replicate this effect and also assessed the impact of the training procedure on hypnotically suggested analgesia. Ninety-eight students who had been preselected for high, medium, and low levels of initial suggestibility were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Training failed to increase overall suggestibility scores or to enhance the effects of a suggestion for pain reduction. Suggested pain reduction was more highly correlated with posttreatment suggestibility scores than with pretreatment suggestibility and, in a regression analysis, only posttreatment suggestibility predicted pain reduction uniquely.

Female↗
PubMed1999

Attentional resources in hypnotic responding.

Theories of hypnotic responding differ regarding attentional processes. Predictions derived from neodissociation, dissociation control, response set, and ironic process theory were tested by administering suggestions with and without cognitive load to high suggestible participants and low suggestible simulators. Cognitive load interfered with responses to ideomotor and cognitive suggestions but not with responses to challenge suggestions. The effect of cognitive load on suggested amnesia depended on the assessment of that response. Although cognitive load decreased recall on the amnesia trial, it did so even more on recall trials before the amnesia suggestion was given and after it was canceled. These data indicate that attentional effort is required for both recall and memory suppression. Under conditions of low cognitive load, simulators displayed less recall than did nonsimulating participants during suggested amnesia, and they reported smaller subjective responses to ideomotor and challenge suggestions.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Dissociation theories of hypnosis.

Hypnotic responses have been attributed to 2 mechanisms that are characterized as dissociative. In E. R. Hilgard's (1986) neodissociation theory, responses are hypothesized to be due to a division of consciousness into 2 or more simultaneous streams, separated by an amnesic barrier that prevents access to suggestion-related executive functions, monitoring functions, or both. In K. S. Bowers's (1992) dissociated control theory, hypnotic inductions are hypothesized to weaken frontal control of behavioral schemas, thereby allowing direct activation of behavior by the hypnotist's suggestions. The authors review the empirical base, conceptual issues, and strengths and weaknesses of both theories.

Amnesia↗
PubMed1998

Dissociating the wheat from the chaff in theories of hypnosis: Reply to Kihlstrom (1998) and Woody and Sadler (1998)

Although there are noteworthy commonalities among disparate theories of hypnosis, they are neither as readily integrated nor as complementary as J.F. Kihlstrom (1998) and E. Woody and P. Sadler (1998) implied. All current theories of hypnosis, including our social cognitive model, are provisional and incomplete, and each has something of value to offer. However, the multiple streams of consciousness hypothesis and the hypnotic state hypothesis should be abandoned because they are neither well supported by data nor consistent with current research and theory in social and cognitive psychology. In their place, the authors propose theoretical formulations based on such concepts as response sets, hierarchical control systems, associative memory networks, automatic activation of behavior, motivation, intention, and response expectancy.

Dissociative Disorders↗
PubMed1998

Surreptitious observation of responses to hypnotically suggested hallucinations: a test of the compliance hypothesis.

Suggestions for arm levitation and for visual, auditory, tactile, and taste hallucinations were administered twice via audiotape to a group of high suggestible students and low suggestible simulators. During one of the administrations, participants were led to believe they were alone, but their behavior was surreptitiously recorded on videotape and observed on a video monitor. During the other administration, they were observed openly by an experimenter who had not been informed about group assignment. When unaware that they were being observed, simulators were significantly less responsive to suggestion and engaged in substantially more role-inappropriate behavior. In contrast, the responsiveness of nonsimulating students was not affected by the presence of an experimenter, and they exhibited little role-inappropriate behavior even when alone. These data indicate that the responses of suggestible individuals reflect internally generated changes in experience and are not due to simple intentional compliance (i.e., faking).

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Experiential scoring for the Waterloo-Stanford Group C scale.

A scale is presented that assesses subjective experiences associated with the test suggestions contained in the Waterloo-Stanford Group C scale (WSGC), a group adaptation of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale: Form (SHSS:C). This scale, along with the standard behavioral scoring system of the WSGC, was given to 926 students at the University of Connecticut. Normative data from this sample indicate that the experiential scoring scale is both reliable and valid as a measure of suggestibility. It is suggested that it may be useful to supplement behavioral scoring with experiential scoring when the WSGC is used.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Prognostic significance of DNA replication errors in young patients with colorectal cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the DNA replication error (RER) status in young patients with colorectal cancer (CRC), and to compare the clinical and pathologic characteristics of RER-positive and RER-negative cases. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: Recent studies suggest that patients with RER-positive CRC have an improved prognosis. Further data are required to confirm this observation in young CRC patients. METHODS: All patients 40 years of age and younger with CRC admitted to the National Naval Medical Center between 1970 and 1992 were considered for inclusion in the study. After review, 36 patients for whom the original archived pathology specimen could be retrieved served as the study population. The RER status was determined using a previously described polymerase chain reaction-based assay. The clinical and pathologic features and survival data were compared to RER status. RESULTS: RER-positive tumors were found in 17 cases (47%). There was no significant difference in Dukes' stage or histologic grade at the time of diagnosis between patients with RER-positive tumors compared to RER-negative tumors. Patients with RER-positive tumors were found to have an improved prognosis: the 5-year survival probability for patients with RER-positive tumors was 68%, as compared to 32% for patients with RER-negative tumors (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: RER-positive tumors are common in young patients with CRC, and patients with RER-positive tumors have a significantly improved prognosis. Because of their young age, survival data and prognosis play an important role in the overall treatment plan of young patients with CRC. Therefore, knowledge of RER status could affect initial therapy, postoperative chemotherapy, and follow-up.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Classical conditioning and the placebo effect.

Stimulus substitution models posit that placebo responses are due to pairings of conditional and unconditional stimuli. Expectancy theory maintains that conditioning trials produce placebo response expectancies, rather than placebo responses, and that the expectancies elicit the responses. We tested these opposing models by providing some participants with information intended to impede the formation of placebo expectancies during conditioning trials and by assessing placebo expectancies. Although conditioning trials significantly enhanced placebo responding, this effect was eliminated by adding expectancies to the regression equation, indicating that the effect of pairing trials on placebo response was mediated completely by expectancy. Verbal information reversed the effect of conditioning trials on both placebo expectancies and placebo responses, and the magnitude of the placebo effect increased significantly over 10 extinction trials. These data disconfirm a stimulus substitution explanation and provide strong support for an expectancy interpretation of the conditioned placebo enhancement produced by these methods.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Hypnotic suggestion: a musical mathaphor.

Conceptually, hypnotizability has always been associated with the increase in suggestibility produced by hypnosis. In practice, hypnotizability is measured as suggestibility following a hypnotic induction. Our understanding of hypnosis and suggestion has been hampered by this discordance between the conceptual and operational definitions of hypnotizability. For example, despite hundreds of studies purporting to use standardized scales to assess hypnotizability, we know next to nothing about that construct, as it has been defined conceptually. Neither the hypothesis that it is a stable trait nor the hypothesis that it is modifiable have been tested in any study, and correlations between hypnotizability and other psychological or physiological variables have not yet been assessed. Conversely, we have learned much about hypnosis, suggestion, and suggestibility. Suggestibility has been measured on reliable and valid instruments, and we have abundant data on its stability, modifiability, and correlates. Hypnosis enhances suggestibility to a modest degree and increases the effectiveness of psychotherapy.

Aptitude↗
PubMed1997

Hypnotic involuntariness and the automaticity of everyday life.

We present a new theory of hypnotic involuntariness based on an integration and extension of recent social and cognitive theories on the automaticity of mundane, intentional behavior. According to this model, experiences of volition and involuntariness-in and out of hypnosis-are constructions or interpretations made possible by the high degree of automaticity that is a characteristic of all complex behavior, including novel behavior. Suggested nonvolitional behaviors are intentional acts that are triggered automatically by situational cues (suggestions) and cue-related sensations. The triggering of both the behaviors and the sensations are enabled by the formation of a generalized response expectancy, which is a cognitive set to respond appropriately to suggestions. Response expectancies are functionally equivalent to implementation intentions taking the form, "emit response x when situation y is encountered." The classification of a response set as either an expectancy or an intention and the experience of the response as volitional or nonvolitional depend on interpretations derived from instructional cues and prior beliefs.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1997

Suggestibility or hypnosis: what do our scales really measure?

Conceptually, hypnotizability has always been defined as the increase in suggestibility produced by hypnosis. In practice, hypnotizability is measured as suggestibility following a hypnotic induction. The data indicate that these are different constructs. Although the induction of hypnosis increases suggestibility to a substantial degree, the correlation between hypnotic and nonhypnotic suggestibility approximates the reliability coefficients of so-called hypnotizability scales. This indicates that hypnotic susceptibility scales are better measures of waking suggestibility than they are of hypnotizability. The discordance between conceptual and operational definitions of hypnotizability can be resolved either by changing the conceptual definitions of hypnosis and hypnotizability or by reinterpreting hypnotizability scores as indexes of nonhypnotic, imaginative suggestibility.

Humans↗
PubMed1996

Reporting biases in hypnosis: suggestion or compliance?

The tendency of highly hypnotizable participants to bias their retrospective perceptual reports in response to instructional demands was reexamined with the addition of low-hypnotizable control participants instructed to simulate hypnosis. Mean scores of high-hypnotizable participants and simulators did not differ, but the responses of simulators to the demand instruction was less variable than those of high-hypnotizable participants, and the shape of the response distribution was different. Unlike simulators, some high-hypnotizable participants who had reported changes in perception that were consistent with a hypnotic suggestion subsequently reported changes opposite to those suggested by a demand instruction. These data were interpreted as suggesting that the responses of high-hypnotizable participants to both the demand instruction and the preceding hypnotic suggestion were not entirely due to compliance.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Hypnotic enhancement of cognitive-behavioral weight loss treatments--another meta-reanalysis.

In a 3rd meta-analysis of the effect of adding hypnosis to cognitive-behavioral treatments for weight reduction, additional data were obtained from authors of 2 studies, and computational inaccuracies in both previous meta-analyses were corrected. Averaged across posttreatment and follow-up assessment periods, the mean weight loss was 6.00 lbs. (2.72 kg) without hypnosis and 11.83 lbs. (5.37 kg) with hypnosis. The mean effect size of this difference was 0.66 SD. At the last assessment period, the mean weight loss was 6.03 lbs. (2.74 kg) without hypnosis and 14.88 lbs. (6.75 kg) with hypnosis. The effect size for this difference was 0.98 SD. Correlational analyses indicated that the benefits of hypnosis increased substantially over time (r = .74).

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy↗
PubMed1996

The effects of subject arm position and initial experience on Chevreul pendulum responses.

Some clinicians maintain that responses to the Chevreul pendulum illusion are facilitated by resting one's elbow on a table. Others claim the reverse. We compared these two methods in a counterbalanced crossover design by having 32 university students perform the Chevreul pendulum illusion with their elbows supported on a table and with their elbows unsupported. Although there was no main effect for method (elbow supported versus elbow unsupported), subjects who rested their elbows on a table on the first trial were more successful in responding on both trials. This suggests that supporting the elbow does facilitate responding, but only on the initial trial. Performance on subsequent trials is determined by degree of success on the first trial. Similar data from a previous study comparing different hypnotic inductions suggests that this phenomenon is generalizable beyond the Chevreul pendulum illusion and supports the hypothesis that the test-retest reliability of suggestibility scales may be due to a stabilization of response expectancy by a person's first experience of imaginative suggestions.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy: a meta-analysis.

A meta-analysis was performed on 18 studies in which a cognitive-behavioral therapy was compared with the same therapy supplemented by hypnosis. The results indicated that the addition of hypnosis substantially enhanced treatment outcome, so that the average client receiving cognitive-behavioral hypnotherapy showed greater improvement than at least 70% of clients receiving nonhypnotic treatment. Effects seemed particularly pronounced for treatments of obesity, especially at long-term follow-up, indicating that unlike those in nonhypnotic treatment, clients to whom hypnotic inductions had been administered continued to lose weight after treatment ended. These results were particularly striking because of the few procedural differences between the hypnotic and nonhypnotic treatments.

Anxiety Disorders↗