Hypnotic control of attention in the Stroop task: a historical footnote

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis,  Apr 2004  by Hammond, D Corydon

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MacLeod, C. M., & Sheehan, P. W. (2003). Hypnotic control of attention in the Stroop task: a historical footnote. Consciousness & Cognition, 72(3), 347-353. Raz, Shapiro, Fan, and Posner (2002) recently provided a compelling demonstration of enhanced attentional control under posthypnotic suggestion.

Using the classic color-word interference paradigm, in which the task is to ignore a word and to name the color in which it is printed (e.g., RED in green, say "green"), they gave a posthypnotic instruction to subjects to the effect that they would be unable to read. This eliminated Stroop interference in high suggestibility subjects, but did not alter interference in low suggestibility subjects. These authors replicated this pattern and further demonstrated that it is not due to a visual strategy (such as blurring or looking at a different location). As a historical footnote, this paper describes a "case study" from 18 years ago in which they observed the same result using a hypnotic instruction to a single highly suggestible individual that he could not read. The elimination of Stroop interference has important implications for both the study of attention and the study of hypnosis. Address for reprints: C. M. MacLeod, Dept. of Life Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada MlC 1A4. E-mail: cmacleod@uwaterloo.ca.

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