The postural sway test: a historical note.

Abstract

Abstract The modern literature on hypnotic and related phenomena generally credits Hull as the originator, around 1929, of the Postural or Body Sway test. However, at least 4 descriptions and discussions of this type of test can be found in the French scientific literature published between 1887 and 1914. The account given by the French physician, Lucien Moutin, of how he serendipitously came to develop a Postural Sway test in 1878 and 2 later articles crediting him as its originator leave little doubt that, while Hull may have independently developed his version of the test in honest ignorance of Moutin's work, Moutin should be considered the first, if not the true, originator of the Postural Sway test as a type of test of suggestibility and/or hypnotizability. Moutin can probably also be credited as antedating Hull in the discovery of homoaction and heteroaction with further credit going to Berillon for the first true quantification of the Postural Sway test.