Hypnotic dissociation, dichotic listening, and active versus passive modes of attention.

Describes 2 experiments with 75 high and low hypnotically susceptible Ss (Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility). Detecting left-channel targets interfered less with the shadowing of right-channel prose when performance of the former task was posthypnotically dissociated from consciousness. However, this superiority over an ordinary divided-attention condition was not due to unconscious target detection by Ss. Rather, the suggestions for posthypnotic responsiveness with amnesia apparently engendered a passive mode of attention to the left-channel task, such that Ss did not actively listen for targets in order to hear them. In Exp II, explicit instructions to adopt a strategy of attentional passivity to the target-detection task proved to be far more effective in producing the reduced-interference effect than the posthypnotic suggestions had been. The posthypnotic suggestions seemed to induce attentional passivity as an indirect effect of amnesia for the posthypnotic suggestions and for previously detected targets. Study findings are interpreted in terms of E. R. Hilgard's (1973) neodissociation theory. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)