Academic literature on the topic 'Hypnotic suggestion'

On the basis of a critical review of the literature in chapter one, it is concluded that no existing theory of hypnosis is able to provide a satisfactory account of the entire set of behavioural, cognitive, social and physiological evidence pertaining to the phenomenon. In an attempt to rectify this situation, an integrative conceptual framework amalgamating existing theories of hypnosis into a single model on the basis of contemporary cognitive psychological theory is presented in chapters two and three. According to the model, successfully executed suggestions result from the automatic activation of perceptual and behavioural representations following the receipt of triggers by low level attentional systems. By this view, the process involved in hypnotic and non-hypnotic suggestions are essentially the same; however, it is argued that contextual features and state changes associated with the hypnotic situation are responsible for the increased responsivity to suggestions typically displayed therein. In the following chapters, four studies designed to assess predictions from the model are described. In the first two, the related predictions that suggestibility is positively related to a low level processing predisposition and negatively related to a high level processing predisposition were assessed. Both studies provided support for the first hypothesis although no evidence for the second hypothesis was obtained. the third and fourth studies examined the related hypotheses that hypnosis is associated with (i) a low level processing bias; and (ii) a high level processing inhibition. Neither hypothesis received any significant empirical support. In the final chapter, the results of these studies are discussed with reference to the theoretical framework outlined in the introductory chapters. It is concluded that the model provides a fairly good account of suggestion, although certain revisions are required before an adequate account of hypnosis can be offered. Avenues for future research are explored.

People have always been fascinated by the extent to which belief or will may influence<p>behavior. Proverbs, like “we tend to get what we expect,” and concepts, such as optimistic<p>thinking or self-fulfilling prophecy, reflect this intuition of an important link between one’s<p>dispositions and subsequent behavior. In other words, one’s predictions directly or<p>indirectly cause them to become true. In a similar manner, every culture, country or<p>religion has their own words for ‘expectation,’ ‘belief,’ ‘disappointment,’ ‘surprise,’ and<p>generally all have the same meaning: under uncertainty, what one expects or believes is the<p>most likely to happen. This relation between what caused a reaction in the past will<p>probably cause it again in the future might not be realistic. If the expected outcome is not<p>confirmed, it may result in a personal ‘disappointment’, and if the outcome fits no<p>expectations, it will be a ‘surprise’. Our brain is hardwired with this heuristic capacity of<p>learning the cause-effect relationship and to project its probability as the basis for much of<p>our behavior, as well as cognitions. This experience-based expectation is a form of<p>learning that helps the brain to bypass an exhaustive search in finding a satisfactory<p>solution. Expectations may thus be considered an innate theory of causality; that is, a set of<p>factors (causes) generating a given phenomenon (effects) influence the way we treat<p>incoming information but also the way we retrieve the stored information. These<p>expectancy templates may well represent one of the basic rules of how the brain processes<p>information, affecting the way we perceive the world, direct our attention and deal with<p>conflicting information. In fact, expectations have been shown to influence our judgments<p>and social interactions, along with our volition to individually decide and commit to a<p>particular course of action. However, people’s expectations may elicit the anticipation of<p>their own automatic reactions to various situations and behaviors cues, and can explain that<p>expecting to feel an increase in alertness after coffee consumption leads to experiencing<p>the consequent physiologic and behavioral states. We call this behavior-response<p>expectancy. This non-volitional form of expectation has been shown to influence<p>cognitions such as memory, pain, visual awareness, implicit learning and attention, through<p>the mediation of phenomena like placebo effects and hypnotic behaviors. Importantly,when talking about expectations, placebo and hypnosis, it is important to note that we are<p>also talking about suggestion and its modulating capability. In other words, suggestion has<p>the power to create response expectancies that activate automatic responses, which will, in<p>turn, influence cognition and behavior so as to shape them congruently with the expected<p>outcome. Accordingly, hypnotic inductions are a systematic manipulation of expectancy,<p>similar to placebo, and therefore they both work in a similar way. Considering such<p>assumptions, the major question we address in this PhD thesis is to know if these<p>expectancy-based mechanisms are capable of modulating more high-level information<p>processing such as cognitive conflict resolution, as is present in the well-known Stroop<p>task. In fact, in a recent series of studies, reduction or elimination of Stroop congruency<p>effects was obtained through suggestion and hypnotic induction. In this PhD thesis, it is<p>asked whether a suggestion reinforced by placebos, operating through response-expectancy<p>mechanisms, is able to induce a top-down cognitive modulation to overcome cognitive<p>conflict in the Stroop task, similar to those results found using suggestion and hypnosis<p>manipulation.<br>Doctorat en Sciences Psychologiques et de l'éducation<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

L’utilisation de la suggestion hypnotique présente un intérêt considérable pour l’étude des processus cognitifs et de leurs modulations. Depuis plusieurs décennies, un nombre croissant d’études a mis en évidence que des suggestions verbales directes, induites chez des personnes hautement suggestibles, peuvent conduire à des modifications drastiques, transitoires et authentiques de l’expérience consciente et de la cognition. Si ces influences ont été établies pour divers processus, l’impact de la suggestion hypnotique reste cependant à étayer pour les processus cognitifs liés au traitement émotionnel. L’objectif de cette thèse était de caractériser l’influence de la suggestion hypnotique sur les processus émotionnels, en étudiant la modulation du biais attentionnel et des processus d’activation et d’inhibition lexico-émotionnels. Plus précisément, nos travaux visaient à déterminer (1) dans quelle mesure la suggestion hypnotique peut intervenir de façon opposée sur les processus émotionnels, (2) quelle composante hypnotique sous-tend ces modulations, (3) comment les effets de dimensions émotionnelles sont affectés par les suggestions verbales et (4) dans quelle mesure la suggestion hypnotique facilite l’inhibition de réponses prépotentes lors du traitement de stimuli émotionnels. Dans cette perspective, nous avons combiné des suggestions hypnotiques visant à augmenter ou diminuer la réactivité émotionnelle, avec des tâches cognitives utilisant des mots émotionnels. Nous avons ainsi réalisé quatre études expérimentales avec des suggestions, combinées à des tâches de Stroop émotionnel (Etudes 1 et 3), de décision lexicale (Etude 4) et de complétion de phrases (Etude 6), accompagnées par la validation d’une échelle de suggestibilité (Etude 2) utilisée pour le recrutement de participants, et par un corpus de phrases (Etude 5) pour la construction d’un matériel expérimental (Etude 6). Les données ont mis en évidence que la suggestion hypnotique (Etudes 1 et 3), ainsi que l’induction hypnotique par relaxation (Etude 3), conduisent à des modulations effectives du biais attentionnel dans la tâche de Stroop émotionnel. En outre, nous avons montré que la suggestion hypnotique peut spécifiquement influencer l’effet de la dimension d’arousal des mots émotionnels présentés dans la tâche de décision lexicale (Etude 4), et faciliter l’inhibition de mots émotionnels dans la tâche de Hayling émotionnelle (Etude 6). Dans l’ensemble, les résultats permettent de préciser l’influence de la suggestion hypnotique sur les processus émotionnels dans des tâches cognitives utilisant des mots émotionnels. Ils suggèrent que le mode de modulation de l’hypnose est pluriel, pouvant influencer les processus émotionnels de façon opposée, agir sur l’effet de dimensions émotionnelles spécifiques, et impliquer plusieurs composantes de la procédure d’hypnose. Nous proposons des pistes d’approfondissement pouvant conduire à une nouvelle compréhension de l’interaction entre hypnose et émotions, et à des perspectives d’application clinique dans le domaine de la régulation émotionnelle<br>The use of hypnotic suggestion is of considerable interest for the study of cognitive processes and their modulations. Over the last few decades, a growing number of studies have demonstrated that direct verbal suggestions, induced in highly suggestible individuals, can lead to drastic, transient and authentic changes in conscious experience and cognition. While these influences have been established for various processes, the impact of hypnotic suggestion has yet to be determined for cognitive processes linked to emotional processing. The aim of this thesis was to characterise the influence of hypnotic suggestion on emotional processes, by studying the modulation of attentional bias and lexico-emotional activation and inhibition processes. More specifically, our work aimed to determine (1) to what extent hypnotic suggestion can intervene in opposing ways on emotional processes, (2) which hypnotic component underlies these modulations, (3) how the effects of emotional dimensions are affected by hypnotic suggestion (4) how hypnotic suggestion can facilitate the inhibition of prepotent responses when processing emotional stimuli. To this end, we combined hypnotic suggestions aimed at increasing or decreasing emotional reactivity with cognitive tasks using emotional words. We carried out four experimental studies using suggestions, combined with emotional Stroop (Studies 1 and 3), lexical decision (Study 4) and sentence completion (Study 6) tasks, accompanied by the validation of a suggestibility scale (Study 2) used to recruit participants, and a corpus of sentences (Study 5) used to construct experimental materials (Study 6). The data highlighted that hypnotic suggestion (Studies 1 and 3), as well as hypnotic induction by relaxation (Study 3), lead to effective modulations of attentional bias in the emotional Stroop task. Furthermore, we have shown that hypnotic suggestion can specifically influence the effect of the arousal dimension of emotional words presented in the lexical decision task (Study 4), and facilitate the inhibition of emotional words in the emotional Hayling task (Study 6). Overall, the results help to clarify the influence of hypnotic suggestion on emotional processes in cognitive tasks using emotional words. They suggest that the modulation mode of hypnosis is plural, being able to influence emotional processes in opposite ways, act on the effect of specific emotional dimensions, and involve several components of the hypnotic procedure. We propose avenues for further research that could lead to a new understanding of the interaction between hypnosis and emotions, and to prospects for clinical application in the field of emotional regulation

Exekutive Funktionen (EF) sind eine Gruppe von Top-Down-Prozessen, die in neuartigen Situationen eingesetzt werden, um neue Trigger-Response-Assoziationen herzustellen oder vorhandene Handlungsoptionen an neue Situationen anzupassen. Obwohl EF erschöpfend untersucht wurden, bleiben wichtige Fragen offen. Beispiele dafür sind (a) Sind Exekutivfunktionen vollständig trennbar oder beruhen sie auf einem gemeinsamen neurokognitiven System? (b) Was messen verschiedene Versionen der Stroop-Aufgabe, einer der meist-verwendeten Aufgaben zur Prüfung der Inhibitionsfunktion? (c) Muss Inhibition immer Ressourcen-fordernd sein, oder gibt es eine Form der Inhibition, die mühelos implementiert werden kann? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen, habe ich neurokognitive Korrelate von EF und ihrer Verbesserung mithilfe posthypnotischer Suggestionen (PHS) und Ereigniskorrelierter Hirnpotentiale (EKP) untersucht. Zusammenfassend ergaben sich folgende Antworten: (a) Psychometrische und EKP-Daten aus den Studien zur Gedächtnisaktualisierung und Inhibition sowie deren Verbesserung anhand PHS zeigten sowohl funktionsspezifische als auch gemeinsame neurokognitive Prozesse der Inhibition und Aktualisierung. (b) Obwohl sowohl die vokale als auch die manuelle Version der Stroop-Aufgabe Inhibitionsfunktionen erfordern, ist die vokale Version Ressourcen-fordernder, da sie mindestens einen zusätzlichen Lokus der Interferenz im Antwort-Produktionsprozess aufweist, der nicht mit PHS beeinflussbar ist und der in der manuellen Version fehlt. (c) Unter Verwendung PHS zur Erhöhung der Präferenzen für kalorienarme Lebensmittel untersuchte ich die Auflösung von Konflikten. Die EKP-Ergebnisse zeigten, dass auch Konflikt-Auflösung, ähnlich wie Inhibition, Ressourcen konsumiert. Insgesamt zeigt dieses Projekt, dass die Verwendung Aufgaben-bezogener PHS in Kombination mit Neuroimaging-Techniken einen fruchtbaren Ansatz für die Untersuchung ungeklärter Fragen über Exekutivfunktionen darstellt.<br>Executive functions (EF) are a group of top-down processes used in novel situations to develop or adapt existing responses to the task at hand. Even though EFs are studied exhaustively, several important questions remain unanswered: (a) Are EFs entirely separated, or do they rely on a common system? (b) What do different versions of the Stroop task measure? (c) Does inhibition always need to be effortful? To address these questions, I investigated neurocognitive correlates of EFs and their enhancements by means of posthypnotic suggestions (PHS) and event-related potentials (ERP). However, before one can use PHSs, it must be elucidated whether and how they affect EFs. Although PHSs are used repeatedly for improving inhibition, it is unclear whether their effects are mediated by bottom-up or top-down processes. By using an updating task, I showed that effects of PHSs can be attributed to top-down processes. Accordingly, a new theory of hypnosis was proposed and empirically tested by modeling hypnotizability scores with structural equation modeling. In short, the simulation-adaption theory suggests that several top-down processes are employed for responding to suggestions. After elucidating the driving mechanism of PHSs is mentally practicing a novel strategy, PHSs were used for addressing the questions regarding EFs. Summarizing (a) the psychometric and ERP results from several studies indicated that different EFs rely on both function-specific and shared neurocognitive processes. (b) Even though different versions of the Stroop task are tapping into inhibition, the vocal compared to the manual version has at least an extra response-production-related locus of interference. (c) Using PHSs for increasing preferences for low-calorie food items, it is shown that resolve is effortful to implement, as indicated by increased P300 amplitudes. Together, this project shows how PHSs, along with neuroimaging techniques, can provide a novel approach for investigating EFs.

Sixty-eight patients suffering from generalized anxiety disorder were allocated to one of four groups to study how hypnotizability (high versus low) and type of suggestion (direct versus indirect) were related to treatment outcome. Patients were assessed on three occasions (Pre-treatment; Post-treatment; and three month Follow-up) using seven anxiety measures and one depression inventory. The Creative Imagination Scale (CIS) was used to assess susceptibility to hypnotic responding. Twenty Ss dropped out prematurely due to both practical and treatment related issues. Interestingly, dropouts were also found to have been significantly more depressed than completers. Patients were given six treatment sessions of hypnotherapy at weekly intervals while the author remained blind to CIS scores. Therapy focused on accessing S's unconscious abilities and resources for symptom resolution, using either direct or indirect suggestion. Patients were provided with self-hypnosis tapes for anxiety reduction in between appointments. Results indicated that completers significantly improved on all dependent measures, but few differences emerged between the four groups. Interestingly, highly hypnotizable patients who received indirect suggestion relapsed slightly on all measures by the Follow-up period, having improved from Pre- to Post-treatment. Discussion is offered on the possible implications these results have for the integrity of the independent variables, concluding that both hypnotizability and type of suggestion have a clinically significant interactive effect. Direct suggestion is recommended for highly hypnotizable generalized anxiety disorder clients, while both direct and indirect suggestion can be used with low hypnotizables, as long as all are couched within permissive language. Limitations of the present research are discussed, along with recommendations for clinical practice and future research

Dans le présent travail, nous proposons qu'un aperçu plus clair de l'interaction entre la suggestion hypnotique et l'attention aiderait à établir le point précis du chronogramme perceptif auquel les effets de l'hypnose interviennent, comment modulent-ils exactement le contrôle cognitif et dans quelle mesure la réponse hypnotique dépend-elle des ressources attentionnelles. Afin de répondre à ces questions expérimentales, nous avons développé trois projets de recherche: (1) les données normatives sur notre traduction en français pour l'Échelle de Susceptibilité Hypnotique de Groupe Harvard, (2) une évaluation des effets de la suggestion posthypnotique sur l'attention visuo-spatiale et (3) une évaluation sur la capacité de la suggestion hypnotique de moduler l'allocation automatique de l'attention accordée par le Anger Superiority Effect. Les résultats de notre première étude nous ont permis de noter avec fiabilité la susceptibilité hypnotique de plus de 500 participants pour les études qui ont suivi. Les résultats de notre deuxième étude indiquent que, pour les participants hautement susceptibles, la suggestion posthypnotique a perturbé avec succès les mécanismes d'attention précoce nécessaires à la stimulation de l'amorçage, ainsi que des jugements de visibilité subjectifs tardifs. Notre troisième étude a révélé que, grâce à une suggestion hypnotique, les participants hautement hypnotizables ont pu empêcher l'allocation automatique de l'attention vers des expressions de colère par un découplage stratégique du contrôle cognitif, mais seulement lorsque les ressources attentionnelles n'avaient pas été cooptées par des processus concurrents. Ensemble, nos résultats appuient les idées selon lesquelles l'hypnose émet ses effets grâce au contrôle cognitif, qui peut perturber les mécanismes attentionnels précoces et tardifs de manières distinctes et que la disponibilité des ressources attentionnelles détermine l'éventail d'action de l'induction et de la suggestion hypnotiques<br>In the present work, we posit that a clearer outline of the interaction between hypnotic suggestion and attention would help establishing the precise point in the perceptual timeline at which hypnosis effects intervene, how exactly do they modulate cognitive control, and to what extent is hypnotic responding dependent on attentional resources. In order to tend to these experimental questions, we developed three research projects: (1) the normative data on our French translation for the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, (2) an evaluation of the effects of posthypnotic suggestion on visuospatial attention, and (3) an evaluation on the capability of hypnotic suggestion to modulate the automatic attention allocation granted by the anger-saliency effect. The results from our first study allowed us to reliably score the hypnotic susceptibility of over 500 participants for the studies that ensued. Results from our second study indicated that for highly susceptible participants, posthypnotic suggestion successfully disrupted the early attentional mechanisms necessary for the fostering of priming, as well as late subjective visual awareness judgments. Our third study revealed that, through hypnotic suggestion, highly susceptible participants were able to deflect automatic attention allocation towards targets’ task-irrelevant angry features through strategic decoupling of cognitive control, but only when attentional resources were not coopted by competing processes. Pooled together, our findings support the ideas that hypnosis enacts its effects through cognitive control, that these can disrupt both early and late attentional mechanisms in distinct manners, and that the availability of attentional resources determines the range of action of hypnotic induction and suggestion