Studies in cognitive reverberation replications and: Extensions

Abstract

The findings on cognitive reverberation reported in a previous issue of this journal were replicated and extended. Two male undergraduates, trained in hypnotic methods, participated as subjects in a series of studies employing the same salience technique, in which S first listens to a string of consonants, next engages in a filler activity, and then tells whatever consonants pop into mind. The data again yielded evidence for the existence of an autonomous reverberation process since disruptive effects occurred with the introduction, during the filler interval, of five‐second pauses under hypnosis or a posthypnotic state of low mental arousal. In addition to being altered in either direction by changes in arousal level, the process was once more shown to be vulnerable to competition by the filler task itself. Duration of reverberatory action was found to vary among individuals from less than one minute up to several hours. The replicated observation of no further reduction in salience from an increase in number or length of disruptive pauses supported the two‐process theory of residual network strength plus reverberation expounded earlier. Finally, the role of cognitive arousal was extended to a more complex task involving the differential manipulation of salience in two sets of stimuli presented on the same trial.

Effects of interference and cognitive arousal upon the processing of organized thought.

“…The same ordered effect was noted when the arousal cues were in force during registration of both focal and incidental stimuli as well as during the reverberation period in the salience task (Blum, Geiwitz, & Hauenstein, 1967). For the two Ss in the present investigation the cues had already been employed successfully hi the follow-up studies of cognitive reverberation (Blum et al, 1968).…”

“…The distinction between cognitive and organismic arousal, to which we have referred, had produced a posthypnotic programming technique geared specifically to the former. Two series of studies (Blum, Geiwitz, & Hauenstein, 1967;Blum, Hauenstein, & Graef, 1968) had established the existence of a period of autonomous reverberation subsequent to input registration and had implicated level of mental arousal and interference as crucial factors in determining the course of such reverberation. Moreover, an adaptation of our salience technique which had been employed in those studies seemed especially promising.…”

EEG correlates of posthypnotically controlled degrees of cognitive arousal

“…Geiwitz, & Stewart, 1967), response time for the identification of tachistoscopically flashed Xs varying in darkness of line, performance on the Stroop color-word test (Blum & Graef, 1971), and the capacity for selective concentration on color vs. form of consonants (Blum & Porter, 1973). A series of experiments on cognitive "reverberation" (Blum, Geiwitz, & Hauenstein, 1967;Blum, Hauenstein, & Graef, 1968) utilized the insertion of 5-sec periods of varying degrees of cognitive arousal in the 20-sec counting interval between oral stimulus presentation of strings of six consonants and the subsequent report by the subject of the flrst six consonants that spontaneously come to mind. The salience of stimulus consonants in the report segment systematically varied from lowest for the -AA interpolation to highest for the +AA interpolation.…”