Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1986

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Howard R. Pollio

Committee Members

Michael G. Johnson, Marilyn Kallet

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out how imagining activity is different when it is verbalized continuously, intermittently, and retrospectively in two different states of consciousness to determine whether an examination of such differences reveal something essential about the nature of imaginative experience. Eight self-hypnotic and six waking volunteers were pretested on imagery ability and on fre quency of hypnotic-like characteristics in usual, waking experience. Self-hypnotic participants were trained using Ericksonian forms of hypnotic induction; waking participants were trained in an "alertness" exercise. Both groups also received training in self-report procedures structured by imagination games. Experimental groups then experi enced three, 50-minute sessions performing the same game-task under counterbalanced continuous, intermittent, and retrospective verbaliza tion conditions. Hypnotic subjects performed the task in selfhypnosis; waking subjects performed the task in an alert, waking state. All participants were interviewed about specific probe effects following each session and again at the conclusion of the experiment. All subjects also answered a 41-item Probe Effects Questionnaire and a 100-item Phenomenological Questionnaire immediately following the final interview.

Protocol, interview, and questionnaire results indicate that the structure of the content of imagining experience remains relatively consistent across different probe procedures within states of consciousness; the form of the experience (i.e., appearance, function, structure), however, tends to change across different self-report procedures and to be moderated by state of consciousness. Hypnosis is described as an altered state of attentiveness and responsiveness which lies on a continuum of awareness and experience with ordinary, alert waking consciousness. Waking participants demonstrate a stronger tendency to promote task attentiveness, continuity and coherence in experience, and retention of information when imagining for themselves in comparison to hypnotic participants who more fre quently report a tendency to go outside established task frameworks to imagine events that do not fit ordinary reality. Changes in the form of waking and hypnotic experience appears moderated by the relative demands made by each procedure for stability, continuity, coherence, and retention of the experience. Results provide a preliminary description of differences in the structure of waking and hypnotic imagining and how those differences are affected by the method used to obtain them.

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