Serial organization during hypnotic amnesia under two conditions of item presentation

Abstract

Hypnotic and nonhypnotic subjects learned a 16 item list of unrelated words using either a standard presentation order (all items presented in the same order on all trials) or an incremental order (on Trial 1 only the first item was presented, on Trial 2 the first item followed by the second, etc.). Following criterion learning, the hypnotic subjects were administered an amnesia suggestion and challenged to recall, while nonhypnotic subjects engaged in a distraction task while attempting to recall. Hypnotic and nonhypnotic subjects who exhibited reduced recall (i.e., nonrecallers) showed equivalent decrements in seriation on the amnesia/distraction trial. Incremental presentation produced initial levels of seriation higher than those of standard presentation. Among nonrecallers, the incremental presentation was associated with a substantially larger reduction in seriation than was the standard procedure. Theoretical implications are discussed.