An ethnically diverse sample of high and low hypnotizable children (N = 27) suffering from cancer or blood disorders and their parents were trained to use both distraction and hypnosis to reduce pain and anxiety. Measures of pain and anxiety were obtained from the children and their parents. Independent raters also judged participants' video-taped distress responses. Data were collected during painful medical procedures, for baseline, distraction, and hypnosis conditions. Supporting E. R. Hilgard's (1977Hilgard's ( , 1992 neodissociation theory, hypnotizable children showed significantly lower pain, anxiety, and distress scores in response to hypnosis in contrast to the low hypnotizable children. Distraction produced significant positive effects for observer-rated distress scores for the low hypnotizable children.Children are subjected to painful procedures such as venipuncture, lumbar punctures, and bone marrow aspirations in the treatment of cancer and nonmalignant blood disorders. Because of repetition, conditioned fear and anxiety become a significant concern for parents and medical staff (

Electroencephalographic cortical event-related potentials (ERPs) are affected by information processing strategies and are particularly appropriate for the examination of hypnotic alterations in perception. The effects of positive obstructive and negative obliterating instructions on visual and auditory P300 ERPs were tested. Twenty participants, stringently selected for hypnotizability, were requested to perform identical tasks during waking and alert hypnotic conditions. High hypnotizables showed greater ERP amplitudes while experiencing negative hallucinations and lower ERP amplitudes while experiencing positive obstructive hallucinations, in contrast to low hypnotizables and their own waking imagination-only conditions. The data show that when participants are carefully selected for hypnotizability and responses are time locked to events, rather robust physiological markers of hypnosis emerge. These reflect alterations in consciousness that correspond to participants' subjective experiences of perceptual alteration. Accounting for suggestion type reveals remarkable consistency of findings among dozens of researchers.

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This study tested the effects of hypnosis for weight control. Hypnotizability was assessed by the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale: Form C (SHSS:C). Forty‐five subjects completed the study with examiners who were blind with respect to hypnotizability scores. Subjects exposed to a simple self‐management technique and to the Spiegel and Spiegel (1978) hypnosis intervention, modified to include specific food aversion, lost significantly more weight at a 3‐month follow‐up than subjects exposed only to the self‐management treatment. The specificity of hypnosis in the program was supported by a significant correlation between weight loss and SHSS:C scores for the same group. Subject attrition was about equal across all treatment groups, suggesting all treatments were perceived as active.

The details of easily replicable interventions using hypnosis and restricted environmental stimulation therapy in the treatment of 4