Hypnosis and top-down regulation of consciousness

Terhune, Devin Blair; Cleeremans, Axel; Raz, Amir; Lynn, Steven Jay

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.02.002

Cited by 134 publications

(159 citation statements)

References 225 publications

(327 reference statements)

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“…The question arises of what exactly happens when highs respond to this posthypnotic suggestion? Many of the theories of hypnosis concur that responding to a hypnotic suggestion involves top-down cognitive control processes and that the feeling of involuntariness, which is the central feature of the hypnotic phenomena (Weitzenhoffer, 1974(Weitzenhoffer, , 1980, is the result of a deteriorated or relinquished metacognition (Bowers, 1990;Dienes & Perner, 2007;Hilgard, 1991;Kihlstrom, 1985;Spanos 1986; for a review see Terhune, Cleeremans, Raz & Lynn, 2017) 1 . Cold control theory takes reduced metacognition as the fundamental process of hypnotic responding.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies that reduce Stroop interference

Pálfi¹,

Parris²,

Collins³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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A remarkable example of reducing Stroop interference is provided by the word blindness post-hypnotic suggestion (a suggestion to see words as meaningless during the Stroop task). This suggestion has been repeatedly demonstrated to halve Stroop interference when it is given to highly hypnotisable people. In order to explore how highly hypnotisable people manage to reduce Stroop interference when they respond to the word blindness suggestion, we tested four candidate strategies in two experiments outside of the hypnotic context. A strategy of looking-away from the target words, and a strategy of visual blurring demonstrated compelling evidence for substantially reducing Stroop interference in both experiments. However, the pattern of results produced by these strategies did not match those of the word blindness suggestion. Crucially, neither looking-away nor visual blurring managed to speed up incongruent responses, suggesting that neither of these strategies are likely underlying mechanisms of the word blindness suggestion. Although the current results did not unravel the mystery of the word blindness suggestion, they showed that there are multiple voluntary ways through which participants can dramatically reduce Stroop interference.

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confidence: 99%

Strategies that reduce Stroop interference

Pálfi¹,

Parris²,

Collins³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…Hypnotic responding can be understood as an instance of unconscious control, as its defining feature is the feeling of involuntariness that accompanies a usually mundane act such as raising one`s arm or hearing the tune of Happy Birthday (Weitzenhoffer, 1974(Weitzenhoffer, , 1980Terhune, Cleeremans, Raz & Lynn, 2017). Although theories of hypnosis share the assumption that a hypnotic response feels like it is happening by itself, not all of them concur with the claim that the response is constructed by cognitive control processes.…”

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confidence: 99%

Does unconscious control depend on conflict?

Pálfi¹,

Seth²

2018

Preprint

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Unravelling the mechanisms that trigger cognitive control is a central question in cognitive science. Cognitive conflict is closely associated with the activation of cognitive control, helping individuals to follow their own goals. In this study, we examined whether the association of conflict and control holds when people are not aware of their intentions (i.e., they experience involuntariness regarding their behaviours). To induce unconscious control, we employed a posthypnotic suggestion (word blindness: that words will appear as a meaningless foreign script) on highly suggestible participants, a manipulation which has previously been shown to halve the Stroop interference effect. To alter the amount of conflict, we manipulated the proportion of incongruent, congruent and neutral Stroop trials between blocks in two experiments. The analyses revealed that the Stroop effect was reduced by the suggestion in the high conflict conditions (conditions with 33% or more incongruent trials), and barely at all in the low conflict conditions (conditions with 10% incongruent trials) compared to no suggestion conditions, thus, supporting the idea that a certain amount of conflict is required to activate unconscious control. This finding can also be interpreted in light of the two competing accounts of the word blindness effect (de-automatisation of reading and response competition models). The results imply that conflict between the response options occurs even in the suggestion condition and so the word blindness suggestion does not influence semantic processing as the de-automatisation of reading account postulates, rather, it is more likely that the suggestion facilitates the reduction of response competition.

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“…Over the past two decades hypnosis research has continuously improved; with a better understanding of its mechanisms, came the possibility of using it as a tool for tackling important general cognitive issues (Terhune et al, 2017). Here, we outline the temporal dynamics of hypnosis, and its link to attention and cognitive control.…”

Section: Statement Of Relevancementioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal dynamics of the hypnotic response

Anlló¹,

Hagège²,

Sackur³

2019

Preprint

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To establish the temporal dynamics of hypnotic responding, we composed an Attentional Blink paradigm in which both the first and second targets were faces, either expressing neutral or angry emotions. We then suppressed the emotional advantage of angry faces by means of a “hypnotic numbing” suggestion. Hypnosis attenuated only the emotional salience of the second target (T2), suggesting that hypnosis’ effects were time and resource dependent. Additionally, we found that hypnosis fostered changes in the attentional task-set of all participants, regardless of their hypnotizability. By implementing drift-diffusion decision modelling, we found that hypnosis lowered decision thresholds. These results portray hypnotic responding as a two-tiered process: first, hypnosis alters the attentional task-set, then, provided processing and response preparation are not interrupted, a hypnotic response based on this altered task-set is produced through late cognitive control strategies dependent on hypnotic susceptibility.

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Hypnosis and top-down regulation of consciousness

Cited by 134 publications

References 225 publications

Strategies that reduce Stroop interference

Strategies that reduce Stroop interference

Does unconscious control depend on conflict?

Temporal dynamics of the hypnotic response

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