HYPNOTIC BLINDNESS AND THE RELEVANCE OF ATTENTION

We investigated the allocation of attention associated with hypnotic blindness in two experiments that tested high hypnotisable subjects on tasks that involved response latency measures. Experiment 1 indicated that hypnotically blind subjects responded more slowly on a decision task when conflicting visual information was present rather than absent. Experiment 2 indicated that subjects responded more slowly on a secondary, word task when doing the decision task during rather than not during hypnotic blindness; also, during hypnotic blindness they responded more slowly when conflicting visual information was present rather than absent. The findings are discussed in terms of the attentional resources subjects allocate to minimize conflict associated with the experience of hypnotic blindness. We point also to the need for a more detailed consideration of the processing demands associated with hypnotic phenomena generally. 1990 Australian Psychological Society