No abstract

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.

We investigated the structure of affect in the Filipino culture and compared our results to those in Western studies. Four samples of students (ns = 397 to 530) rated their mood for today, the past week, or in general, using near-comprehensive sets of Filipino mood adjectives. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a hierarchical model of affect and the cross-cultural comparability of self-report mood dimensions (i.e., higher-order Positive and Negative Affect, plus specific affects corresponding to hypothesized universal or basic emotions). The results were more consistent with biological theories of affect than a strong social constructivist perspective.

Barabasz, Barabasz, Jensen, Calvin, Trevisan, and Warner (1999) showed that, when subjects are stringently selected for hypnotizability and responses are time locked to events, robust markers of hypnotic responding emerge that reflect alterations in consciousness that correspond to subjects' subjective experiences of perceptual alteration. To further test the Barabasz et al. (1999) hypothesis, we obtained EEG visual P300 event-related potentials (ERPs) from 20 high- and low-hypnotizable subjects. The effects of positive obstructive and negative obliterating instructions were tested during waking and alert hypnotic conditions. High-hypnotizables showed greater ERP amplitudes in response to the negative hallucination condition and lower ERP amplitudes in response to the positive obstructive hallucination when compared to the low-hypnotizables. Contrary to socio-psychological or role play conceptualizations, the hypnotic induction resulted in specific psychophysiological responses which could not be produced by waking imagination or by the lows who were trying to mimic hypnotic responding.