MAY 2006, VOLUME 34, NUMBER 1, Abstract 15
Hypnotic Disruptions of Reading: Investigating Modulation of the Stroop Effect
Lynette Hung, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Hypnotic suggestions can produce changes in information processing that are accompanied by behavioural and experiential alterations. I investigated the impact of two suggestions on one form of information processing, reading; in particular, hypnotic modulation of the Stroop effect. Before hypnosis, high and low hypnotisable participants performed a waking Stroop task, in which they classified the ink colour of incongruent (word and colour inconsistent) and neutral (word irrelevant to colour) words. During hypnosis, participants received either a colour hallucination and word agnosia suggestion, or an attentional focusing strategy aimed at disrupting semantic processing. Participants were then administered a formal visual test of the suggestion and a hypnotic Stroop task. Findings indicated that the suggestion influenced participants’ experiential but not behavioural processing during hypnotic Stroop. These findings are discussed in terms of hypnotic information processing, as well as relevant strategy enactments in hypnosis.