The International Journal of Clinical 0020-7144/04/5201-003$16.

00
and Experimental Hypnosis # The International Journal of Clinical
2004, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 3–26 and Experimental Hypnosis

HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL

EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING1
PETER FARVOLDEN2
Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ont., Canada

ERIK Z. WOODY
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont., Canada

Abstract: According to the dissociated-control hypothesis forwarded

by Woody and Bowers (1994), the effects of hypnosis are consistent
with attenuated frontal lobe functioning. The present study was
designed to compare the performance of participants with high
and low hypnotic ability on a variety of memory tasks thought to
be sensitive to frontal lobe functioning, as well as some control
memory tasks not considered to be sensitive to such functioning.
Results generally indicated that participants with high hypnotic
ability have more difficulty with tasks sensitive to frontal lobe func-
tioning, including free recall, proactive interference, and source am-
nesia tasks, both within and outside of the context of hypnosis. These
differences, which were not found for nonfrontal tasks, are generally
supportive of the dissociated control theory of hypnotic responding.

In times past, it was widely assumed that the ‘‘trance’’ associated

with hypnosis was a form of artificial sleep and that somnabulists
would have no posthypnotic recollection of the events that occurred
while they were ‘‘asleep’’ (Evans, 1988). However, the present con-
sensus is that posthypnotic amnesia is only experienced as the result of
direct suggestions to that effect and that spontaneous amnesia is
neither an interesting nor essential feature of high hypnotic ability
(Davidson & Bowers, 1991; Kihlstrom & Schacter, 1995).
Most available theories of hypnotic responding do not posit any real
underlying changes in cognitive control processes during hypnosis.
According to these views, any unsuggested effects of hypnosis on

Manuscript submitted August 30, 2001; final revision received July 15, 2002.
1
This article is based on a doctoral dissertation by the first author, supervised by
Kenneth S. Bowers and the second author. The research was supported by grant from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and a fellowship from the National
Science and Engineering Research Council.
2
Address correspondence to Peter Farvolden, Ph.D., Clinical Research Division,
Section on Personality and Psychopathology, Center for Addiction and Mental Health,
250 College Street, Toronto, Ont., Canada M5T 1R8. E-mail: peter_farvolden@camh.net

3
4 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

memory (Furneaux, 1946; Hammer, Evans, & Bartlett, 1963) can be best
accounted for by demand, context, and expectation effects (Kihlstrom,
1992; Kirsch, 1997; Spanos, 1986).
In contrast, according to the theory of dissociated control (Woody &
Bowers, 1994), hypnosis alters the actual underlying control of behavior
and not just attributions about control. That is, hypnosis results in a
relative weakening of the executive level of cognitive control respon-
sible for the initiation and monitoring of behavior. According to Woody
and Bowers, the unsuggested effects of hypnosis on memory bear a
strong resemblance to what Shallice (1988) and others (Shimamura,
1995) have termed frontal amnesia.
The present study was designed to be a strong test of the dissociated
control explanation of hypnotic amnesia. The notion that the unsuggest-
ed effects of hypnosis on memory resemble the symptoms of frontal
amnesia suggests that hypnotized participants should have difficulty
with the sorts of memory tasks that are used to distinguish frontal
amnesia from other amnesic syndromes (i.e., temporal-lobe problems).
Shimamura (1995) has described a variety of such memory tests. What
follows is a brief review of Shimamura’s battery of frontal memory
tasks and a brief summary of relevant research in hypnosis and
memory to date.

Free Recall
Patients with frontal lobe lesions show impaired free recall for lists of
unrelated words (Gershberg & Shimamura, 1991). Shimamura (1995)
has proposed that the impairment in free recall observed in frontal lobe
patients is due to the demands that such a task places on internally
generated memory strategies and effortful search and retrieval pro-
cesses (Baddeley, 1986). Interestingly enough, Kihlstrom (1980) re-
ported that hypnotized participants take significantly more trials to
learn a list of unrelated words than do control participants.

Proactive Interference
Patients with frontal lobe lesions have difficulty ignoring irrelevant
information (Milner, 1982; Perret, 1974). There are a number of memory
tasks designed to assess the impact of prior learning in the learning of new
information, and the term proactive interference is used to describe the
negative effects that prior learning can have on new learning. Shimamura
(1995) has reported that patients with frontal lobe damage show impair-
ment on tests of memory that require participants to inhibit previously
learned responses in an AB-AC paired-associate learning task.
There has only been one reported study of proactive-interference
effects following a hypnotic induction. Dillon and Spanos (1983)
administered a Brown-Peterson memory task designed to induce
proactive interference. They reported that an amnesia suggestion
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 5

did not prevent previously learned material from interfering with

newly presented material and that hypnotized participants showed
no more proactive interference than unhypnotized participants. Given
that the Brown-Peterson task is quite different from the proactive-
interference task employed by Shimamura (1995), the effects of hyp-
nosis on performance on such tasks merit further exploration.

Word Fluency
The word-fluency test is well established as a measure of left frontal
lobe functioning, in contrast to which the design-fluency task is a less
well-established measure of right frontal lobe functioning (Shimamura,
1995). Patients with left frontal lobe damage demonstrate marked
impairment on the word-fluency test (Janowsky, Shimamura,
Kritchevsky, & Squire, 1989). Gruzelier and Warren (1993) have re-
ported that hypnotized participants show a reduction in word genera-
tion to letter categories, results that are broadly consistent with the
hypothesis that hypnotized participants have a difficulty in word
finding that is similar to the anomia observed in patients with left
frontal damage.

Temporal Organization
Milner (1971) reported that frontal lobe patients exhibit deficits in the
temporal organization of memory. Using a word-sequencing task,
Shimamura, Janowsky, and Squire (1990) have also demonstrated
impaired memory for temporal order in patients with frontal lobe
lesions. Participants were presented with a list of 15 words, one at a
time, and then were asked to reconstruct the correct list order from a
random display of the stimulus words. Patients with frontal lobe
lesions exhibited significant impairment on this task as compared to
control participants (Shimamura et al., 1990).
It has been demonstrated, more often than not, that highly hypnotiz-
able participants are likely to recall in a more disorganized fashion
following suggestions for amnesia (Bertrand & Spanos, 1986;
Geiselman, Bjork, & Fishman, 1983; Kihlstrom & Wilson, 1984; Radtke
& Spanos, 1981; Radtke, Spanos, Malva, & Stam, 1986; Schwartz, 1980;
Spanos & Bodorik, 1977; Spanos & D’Eon, 1980; Spanos, Radtke-
Bodorik, & Stam, 1980). The evidence for temporal disorganization
in hypnosis in the absence of specific suggestions for amnesia is also
mixed. However, in contrast to Kihlstrom and Evans (1979), Radtke
et al. (1986) and Schwartz (1980) have reported that even prior to
receiving suggestions for amnesia, hypnotized participants are signifi-
cantly less sequential in their recall of their hypnotic experiences than
are nonhypnotized control participants. Indeed, Radtke et al. pointed
out that the effects of hypnosis on temporal organization might not be
due to suggested amnesia.
6 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

Source Amnesia
Source amnesia occurs when one can remember factual information
but not when or where the information was either originally or last
encountered. Source-error effects are usually associated with impair-
ment in frontal lobe functioning (Moscovitch, 1994; Shimamura, 1995).
For example, Janowsky, Shimamura, and Squire (1989b) asked patients
with frontal lobe lesions and control participants to learn a set of 20
obscure trivia facts (e.g., the name of the dog on the Cracker Jacks box is
‘‘Bingo’’). After a 6- to 8-day retention interval, participants were tested
for recall of both the facts learned during the previous session (e.g.,
what is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jacks box?) and for 20 new
facts, as well as for their knowledge of the source of the information.
Janowsky et al. (1989b) reported that patients with frontal lobe lesions
were able to recall as many of the previously learned facts as normal
controls. However, Janowsky et al. (1989b) also reported that patients
with frontal lesions tended to make two kinds of source errors: (a)
errors in which they falsely reported that an ‘‘old’’ fact learned in the
first session was most recently encountered at some time prior to the
first session; and (b) errors in which they incorrectly reported that a
recently ‘‘new’’ fact was encountered during the first learning session.
According to these criteria, source memory was impaired in patients
with frontal lobe lesions, even though their recall of the ‘‘old’’ facts was
as good as that of control participants.
There are considerable data regarding source amnesia following
specific suggestions for amnesia (Cooper, 1966; Evans & Thorn, 1966;
Gheorgui, 1967). In these experiments, during hypnosis participants
are generally asked several questions, the answers to which they do not
usually know (e.g., an amethyst is a blue or purple gemstone. What
color does it turn when exposed to heat?). Participants are told the
correct answer to the questions, and then posthypnotic amnesia is
usually suggested in the standard way. After participants are tested for
their memory of the content of the hypnosis session (standard recall
amnesia), the same questions are asked again. Like frontal lobe pa-
tients, hypnotized participants often respond with the correct answer to
the question, even though they are unable to specify how they know the
answer (Evans, 1979; Evans & Thorn, 1966). Indeed, Evans (1979, 1988)
concluded that some spontaneous source amnesia is a genuine effect of
hypnosis and not simply an artifact of the demand characteristics of the
situation.
Metamemory and Cognitive Estimation
When people are asked to remember, they can be either more or less
sure that the information is available and/or accurate. At one extreme,
people with anomic deficits will often report that the information is ‘‘on
the tip of the tongue’’ even though they cannot access it (Shimamura,
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 7

1995). At the other extreme, patients with Korsakoff’s Syndrome can

report confabulations as certain memories (Lezak, 1995). Patients of
both types could be said to be suffering from a deficit in metamemory,
that is, a deficit in knowledge of what they know and/or a deficit in the
ability to initiate and monitor strategies that can be used to access
memories (Metcalfe & Shimamura, 1994).
Janowsky, Shimamura, and Squire (1989a) have reported that pa-
tients with frontal lobe lesions exhibit metamemory deficits when they
are asked to make judgments about what they know. For example, in
one test, participants were given 24 sentences to learn (e.g., Patty’s
garden was full of marigolds). After a delay, cued recall was assessed
for the last word in each sentence (e.g., Patty’s garden was full of
__________). If participants could not recall the correct answer, they
were asked to rate on a four-point scale how likely they would be to
recognize the answer from a number of alternatives. The ‘‘feeling of
knowing’’ (FOK) judgments were then correlated with performance on
a subsequent recognition task using a multiple-choice format test.
Janowsky et al. (1989a) reported that frontal lobe patients were sig-
nificantly more impaired in FOK accuracy as compared to controls,
even though the frontal lobe patients performed as well as the controls
on the recall and recognition tasks.
Shimamura (1995) has speculated that the inaccuracy of the FOK
judgments of frontal lobe patients might be related to the deficits this
population exhibits on other retrieval tasks. For example, others have
reported that participants with frontal lobe lesions often give wildly
inaccurate responses to questions involving cognitive estimation, such
as ‘‘How tall is the average English woman?’’ (Shallice & Evans, 1978),
and can have difficulty estimating the price of objects (Smith & Milner,
1984). Although there are no reports in the hypnosis literature of
hypnotized participants demonstrating difficulties in cognitive estima-
tion as demonstrated in frontal lobe patients, there is evidence of
hypnotized participants’ difficulties with cognitive estimation of the
introspective (metacognitive) sort (Woody & Bowers, 1994; Schwartz,
1980).
To some extent, hypnotic subjects do respond as if they show a
metamemory deficit. For example, Kihlstrom (1980) has demonstrated
that hypnotized amnesic participants can recall target words if they are
given an appropriate cue word. In addition, Kihlstrom (1980) reported
an experiment in which participants learned a categorized word list
and were then given a suggestion to be amnesic for all of the words.
Participants with high hypnotic ability demonstrated fairly dense
amnesia, until given a category-instances test (CIT). On the CIT, the
participants were asked to generate 15 instances of each of several
categories. Half of the categories were categories from the pre-
vious learning task (critical) and half were new categories (neutral).
8 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

Kihlstrom (1980) demonstrated that despite their amnesia for the target
words, amnesic participants were able to recall the words in the context
of the CIT.
In a similar study, participants were asked to rate their confidence
that each of the items (old and new) had appeared on their lists. Waking
control participants made a perfect discrimination between old and
new items. In contrast, hypnotized participants found it more difficult
to distinguish between old and new material, being less confident that
old material had been learned previously and more confident that they
had previously encountered the new material (Kihlstrom, 1985).
Finally, Dywan and Bowers (1983), as well as others (e.g., Orne, Soskis,
Dinges, & Orne, 1984; Sheehan, 1988), have demonstrated that using
hypnosis to ‘‘refresh’’ memory for previously learned material leads to
performance changes that suggest deficits in metamemory. These include
a more lax report criterion for reporting mental content as a memory
(Dywan, 1995) and high confidence about erroneous memories.

Summary and Hypotheses

Thus, there appears to be a reasonable fit between the evidence from
the hypnosis literature and the frontal memory literature described by
Shimamura (1995). The purpose of the present study was to directly
compare the performance of hypnotized participants to the perfor-
mance of control participants on the tasks noted by Shimamura as
tapping diminished frontal functioning. According to Woody and
Bowers (1994), hypnotized participants should show many of the subtle
impairments in memory performance that have been observed in
patients with frontal lobe damage. Thus, participants with high and
low hypnotic ability were compared on performance on memory tasks
suggested by Shimamura as being sensitive to frontal lobe functioning,
together with some associated nonfrontal memory tasks. In addition,
this was done both within and outside of the context of hypnosis. It was
anticipated that the hypnotic context (including a hypnotic induction)
would enhance any differences on the frontal memory tasks between
those high versus low in hypnotic ability.

Participants
Participants at the University of Waterloo were selected on the basis
of being initially tested in a large group session, using the Harvard
Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (Shor & Orne, 1962),
followed by a second assessment conducted in smaller groups of 2 to 10
people, using a group adaptation of the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale
of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C (WSGC; Bowers, 1998). Thirty
participants with high hypnotic ability were recruited from those
who scored nine or above and passed the amnesia item on both scales.
Thirty participants with low hypnotic ability were recruited from
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 9

among those who scored four or below on both scales. A research

assistant carried out the selection of the participants to ensure that the
experimenter was blind to each participant’s hypnotic ability.

Procedure
Participants were telephoned and either asked to participate in a
study of hypnosis and memory (hypnosis condition) or a study of
memory and individual differences (nonhypnotic-context condition).
Across two sessions, participants completed the battery in one of four
possible counterbalanced orders. However, all participants began and
ended the first session with the source amnesia task and began and
ended the second session with the metamemory task. In addition, the
order of tasks was arranged such that participants were not asked to
perform two memorization tasks in a row. Participants in the non-
hypnotic condition were not informed about the relevance of their
hypnotic ability until the end of the second session. Participants in
the hypnosis condition received a standard hypnotic induction at the
outset of each session, whereas participants in the nonhypnotic con-
dition were simply introduced to the source amnesia task as the first
test.

Tests
Free recall. The task was closely based on the Rey Auditory Verbal
Learning Test (Lezak, 1995). Participants were aurally presented with a
list of 15 unrelated words and asked to recall as many words as possible
following the presentation. Five successive study-test trials were pre-
sented, with the same 15 words presented in a different order for each
study trial. The list of words was read to each participant at the rate of
one word per second, followed by an oral test of free recall that
continued for thirty seconds. Participants’ responses were recorded
on audiotape. The measure of interest was the number of words
recalled on the fifth learning trial.
Proactive interference (AC1). The stimuli consisted of two lists of 12
paired associates (e.g., RIVER-POND, LION-HUNTER) (Shimamura,
Janowsky, & Squire, 1991). Across the two lists, the cue words were
the same (i.e., the first word in each pair), whereas the response words
(i.e., the second word in each pair) were different. Three study-test
trials of each paired-associate (AB) list were administered. Participants
were shown the word pairs one at a time and instructed to read the
word pairs out loud and to try to remember them as pairs so that they
could later report the second word when presented with the first.
After each study trial, participants were visually presented with the
cue words and asked to report the word associated with each cue
word.
10 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

Following the three study-test trials for the first (AB) pairs of words,
a second set of three study-test trials (AC) was administered. Partici-
pants were explicitly informed that the second list involved the same
cue words but different test words. Otherwise, the instructions and
procedures for the second list were the same. Finally, in order to
determine if interference effects were due to problems in list discrimi-
nation, participants were given a final cued-recall test in which each cue
word was presented and both of the response words were requested, a
‘‘modified-modified free recall’’ (MMFR) test (Barnes & Underwood,
1959). Participants’ responses were audio taped throughout this task.
The measure of interest was the number of errors on the first test trial
for the second (AC) list. It is important to note that the AB1 and MMFR
trials do not discriminate frontal lobe patients from normal controls.
Patients with frontal lobe damage are characterized by normal perfor-
mance on the AB1 and MMFR trials and poor performance, as com-
pared to normals, only on the AC1 trials (Shimamura, 1995).
Word fluency. Participants were given 60 seconds per category to say
as many words as possible beginning with the letters F, A, and S (Lezak,
1995). Participants’ responses were audio taped, and performance was
measured using three indices: (1) total number of words produced for
the three letters; (2) number of errors, i.e., the number of times the
participant failed to follow instructions; and (3) number of persevera-
tive responses.
Word-sequencing task. Fifteen common one- or two-syllable words
were selected according to the same criteria as for the free-recall task
and printed individually on 4
6 inch index cards. The words were
presented visually at the rate of 3 seconds per word, and participants
were instructed to read each word aloud and try to remember the order
in which the words appeared. Immediately following the study phase,
participants were instructed to place the words in the same sequence in
which they had just been presented. The measure of interest was the
Spearman rank correlation between the actual study order and the
order in which the participant placed the cards during the organization
task (perfect score ¼ þ1.0).
Source amnesia. Thirty difficult general-information questions were
employed that were designed to tap participants’ knowledge about
obscure facts across a variety of topics including literature, movies and
music, geography, sports, and history (e.g., what is the name of the
town through which Lady Godiva supposedly made her famous ride?)
(Janowsky et al., 1989b). For each participant, one set of 15 facts was
presented in the study phase and the remaining 15 facts were used in
the test phase as foils. Ten easy factual questions were also included in
the test phase (e.g., what is the name of a dried grape?) to ensure that
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 11

some correctly answered questions had clearly been learned from a

source outside the experimental situation.
At the beginning of the study phase, participants were presented
with the questions in the form of ‘‘facts’’ (e.g., the name of the town
through which Lady Godiva supposedly made her famous ride is
Coventry). No instructions were given to try to learn and remember
the material. Participants were asked to read each fact aloud and place
it in one of five categories (literature, movies and music, geography,
sports, and history).
At the end of the experimental session—after the participant had
completed a number of intervening tasks—both source recall and
recognition memory were tested. The facts were now presented in
the form of aural questions (e.g., what was the name of the town
through which Lady Godiva made her famous ride?). The participant
was tested on 40 facts: the 15 facts that had previously been presented,
15 new difficult (baseline) questions that had not been previously
presented, and 10 new easy facts. No reference to the study phase
was made. Rather, participants were simply asked to answer some
general-information questions (Janowsky et al., 1989b).
When participants correctly answered a question, they were asked to
recollect when they had last encountered that information (can you tell
me the last time you encountered that information?). When participants
incorrectly answered a question, they were asked if they had ever
encountered the information before. If a participant answered in the
affirmative, then she or he was asked when the last time was that the
information had been encountered. Thus, even if a participant failed to
recall the information learned earlier in the session, she or he might
identify that time as the most recent time that the information was
encountered. Participants’ responses were audio taped throughout this
task.
In addition to retrieval of the 15 facts from the study phase, two types
of error were recorded. An ‘‘omission’’ was recorded if the participant
reported that the information was learned from an outside source when
it had in fact been presented during the study phase. A ‘‘commission’’
was recorded if the participant reported that the information was
learned in the study phase when it had, in fact, not been previously
presented.
Cognitive estimation. Shallice and Evans (1978) constructed a list of 15
questions for which the correct approach (or strategy) for answering the
question is not immediately apparent (e.g., how tall is the average
Canadian woman?). However, once an appropriate strategy is hit upon,
participants do not require any kind of specialist knowledge to provide
a reasonable answer. A 14-item version of the task slightly adapted for
University of Waterloo participants was employed.
12 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

The questions were presented aurally and participants were given 30

seconds to answer each question. Participants’ responses were audio
taped. The measure of interest was the extremeness of a response
(Shallice & Evans, 1978), which could be either greater than or less than
the average answer. Any answer given that was greater or less than the
average response for that question by two standard deviations or more
was considered to be extreme. The number of extreme responses was
summed for each participant.

Metamemory. The procedure was a slightly modified version of the

task described in Shimamura and Squire (1986). Twenty-four simple
sentences were printed individually on index cards (e.g., ‘‘At the
museum we saw some ancient relics made of clay’’). At the outset
of the experimental session, participants were presented with the 24
sentences for study. They were asked to read each sentence aloud and
to study the sentences so that they could remember them later. Twelve
of the 24 sentences were presented once during the study phase and 12
of the sentences were presented twice during the study phase, for a
total of 36 sentence presentations per participant. Sentences were
presented in a random order across participants. At the end of the
experimental session, after several intervening tasks, participants were
asked to recall or guess a missing word in each of 36 sentences (24
sentences from the study phase and 12 new sentences that had not been
previously studied). Participants were encouraged to guess if they were
uncertain. Also, they were correctly informed that they might not have
previously seen some of the test items (Janowsky et al., 1989a).
Immediately following the recall phase, participants were asked to
make feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments for all nonrecalled deleted
words (including both errors of omission and commission). For each
nonrecalled item, as well as for each of the 8 new items, participants
rated their FOK on a 4-point scale (high, medium, low, pure guess).
More specifically, participants were shown each sentence and asked to
judge the likeliness that they would be able to recognize the missing
word if some choices were given. After placing the nonrecalled
sentences and 12 new sentences into one of the four FOK categories,
participants were asked to rank order the sentences within each rating
category according to their FOK. Thus, at the end of this phase, all of
the sentences were ranked, from the one judged as having the highest
FOK to the one judged as having the lowest FOK (Janowsky et al.,
1989a).
Following the FOK phase, participants were given a seven-alter-
native, forced-choice recognition test for all 24 study sentences and the
12 new sentences. The measure of interest for determining the accu-
racy of the FOK judgments was the within-subject correlation between
the FOK ranking and recognition performance for the sentences that
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 13

had been presented at the beginning of the session (Janowsky et al.,

1989a).

RESULTS

For each task, outliers were removed at two standard deviations

from the mean. This resulted in data from approximately 5 people
being removed from each analysis. There was a comparable contribu-
tion of highs and lows to outliers.
A series of 2 (hypnotic ability: high, low)
2 (context: induction, no
induction) ANOVAs was then performed on the data from the various
frontal memory tasks. In general, across almost all of the tasks, there
was an absence of significant Hypnotic Ability
Context interactions,
indicating that differences associated with hypnotic ability general-
ized across both types of context. For a summary of these results, see
Table 1.
Concerning the free-recall task, participants with high hypnotic
ability recalled significantly fewer words on the criterial fifth learning
trial, as compared to participants with low hypnotic ability. Across all
learning trials, participants with high hypnotic ability also made more
perseverative responses, compared to participants with low hypnotic
ability. However, an analysis of the number of errors (i.e., words
reported that were not on the list) committed across trials revealed
no difference between the groups.
Considering next the proactive-interference task, there was no main
effect of hypnotic ability on the number of errors made on the first
study-test trial of the first set of pairs of words (AB). Likewise, there
was no main effect of hypnotic ability on the final cued-recall task in
which participants were asked to report both responses to the stem
word (MMFR). However, on the chief measure from this test, errors on
the first test trial for the second set (AC1), participants with high
hypnotic ability clearly made more errors, compared to participants
with low hypnotic ability.
For the word-fluency task, there was no significant difference be-
tween the groups on the total number of responses. Nonetheless, for
perseverations the interaction between hypnotic ability and context
approached significance, p ¼ .08. The interaction appeared to be the
result of participants with high hypnotic ability in the hypnosis con-
dition producing more perseverations (M ¼ 0.60, SD ¼ 0.74), as com-
pared both to participants with high hypnotic ability outside of the
context of hypnosis (M ¼ 0.23, SD ¼ 0.44) and low hypnotizable coun-
terparts in both conditions (M ¼ 0.21, SD ¼ 0.42).
Moving to the word-sequencing task, there was a significant main
effect for hypnotic ability on the degree of matching between the actual
14 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

Table 1
Results of Hypnotic Ability (High, Low)
Context (Induction, No Induction)
ANOVAs of the Frontal Memory Tasks

Task Hypnotic
Ability F Error

High Low HA HA
C df MS
Free recall
Trial 5 errorsy
M 13.18 13.79 5.36 1.84 55 0.95
SD 1.04 0.94
Perseverationsy
M 5.96 3.14 6.81 0.94 55 15.89
SD 4.60 3.17
Proactive interference
AB1 errors
M 1.12 0.98 1.15 1.13 56 0.38
SD 1.02 1.13
AC1 errorsy
M 2.35 1.17 12.57 1.84 56 1.60
SD 1.42 0.94
MMFR errors
M 0.72 0.41 2.72 1.13 55 0.49
SD 0.70 0.69
Word fluency
Perseverationsy
M 0.43 0.21 2.03 3.23 55 0.28
SD 0.63 0.42
Word sequencing
Spearman rank correlationy
M 0.81 0.68 9.52 0.49 56 0.03
SD 0.13 0.18
Source amnesia
Retrieval failures
M 2.33 1.46 0.82 1.25 54 1.26
SD 1.73 1.32
Source omission errorsy
M 2.33 1.46 4.23 0.03 54 2.40
SD 1.73 1.32
Total source errorsy
M 2.78 1.50 6.28 0.43 55 3.73
SD 2.25 1.55

(continued)
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 15

Table 1
(continued)
Task Hypnotic
Ability F Error

High Low HA HA
C df MS
Metamemory task
Recall
M 3.38 3.63 0.17 0.56 56 0.15
SD 1.32 1.54
Recognition
M 1.00 1.11 0.14 0.42 56 0.18
SD 1.17 1.12
Total metamemory errorsy
M 3.48 2.28 4.18 1.46 56 5.01
SD 2.53 1.86
Note. HA ¼ hypnotic ability; C ¼ Context;  p < .05,  p < .01; MMFR ¼ modified-modi-
fied free recall; AC1 ¼ proactive interference trial; AB1 ¼ first study-test AB trial;
y
indicates a frontal task (all others are nonfrontal).

study order and the order in which the participant placed the stimulus
cards (Spearman rank correlation). However, somewhat surprisingly,
participants with high hypnotic ability performed better on this task
than did participants with low hypnotic ability.
On the source-amnesia task, participants with high hypnotic ability
made more total source errors, as compared to participants with low
hypnotic ability. This difference was mainly due to errors of omission.
Although there were no significant group differences on the number of
errors of commission, participants with high hypnotic ability tended to
make more errors of omission, as compared to participants with low
hypnotic ability. It is important to note that an analysis of the number of
simple retrieval failures, i.e., the number of the fifteen trivia facts
categorized at the outset of the session that the participant failed to
recall at the end of the session, revealed no significant effects.
The measure of interest for the cognitive-estimation task was the
total number of extreme responses (Shallice & Evans, 1978). A Hypnotic
Ability (high, low)
Context (induction, no induction) ANOVA of
number of extreme responses failed to yield any significant main effects
or interaction (and hence this task is omitted from Table 1).
Finally, turning to the metamemory task, there were no group
differences for the number of words recalled during the recall phase
nor for the number of recognition failures. For the FOK task, partici-
pants were considered to have committed an error of omission if they
rated the confidence of their ability to recognize a word as ‘‘low’’ or a
‘‘pure guess’’ when they had, in fact, been presented with the sentence
16 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

in the study phase. Participants were considered to have committed an

error of commission if they rated their confidence of their ability to
recognize a word as ‘‘high’’ or ‘‘medium,’’ when they had, in fact, not
been presented with the sentence in the study phase. In short, parti-
cipants could either be under-confident about their ability to recognize
the missing word that had previously been presented in the sentence
during the study phase (omission) or over-confident about their ability
to recognize the missing word from a sentence that had not previously
been presented (commission). Participants made, on average, 1.89
omission errors (SD ¼ 1.58) and 0.25 (SD ¼ 0.55) commission errors
in their FOK judgments. Because the average of the total number of
errors of either type was quite low, errors of both types were summed
for each participant to yield a total metamemory error score for each
participant. The results of a Hypnotic Ability (high, low)
Context
(induction, no induction) ANOVA of total metamemory errors re-
vealed a significant main effect for hypnotic ability and no other
significant main effect or interaction. Overall, participants with high
hypnotic ability tended to make more metamemory errors, as com-
pared to participants with low hypnotic ability.

Multivariate Analysis of Variance

The prevailing result of the ANOVA analyses of the frontal memory
tasks was a main effect for hypnotic ability. Participants with high
hypnotic ability appeared to have more difficulty with many of the
frontal memory tasks both within and outside of the context of hyp-
nosis. To more powerfully explore the possibility of an interaction
between hypnotic ability and context, a MANOVA (2 levels of hypnotic
ability
2 contexts
6 frontal memory tasks) was performed on the
data (trimmed, as for the ANOVAs, at two SDs). The measures selected
for inclusion in the analysis included the measures likely to be most
sensitive to differences between participants, according to the results
from the ANOVAs reported above. Thus, number of errors on the
proactive-interference task (AC1), number of words recalled on the
fifth free-recall trial, number of free-recall perseverations, word-
sequencing score, total number of source errors, and total number of
metamemory errors were entered into the analysis. The results revealed
a significant main effect for hypnotic ability, F(6, 37) ¼ 7.09, p < .001.
However, despite the aggregation of measures, the hypnotic ability by
context interaction was not found to approach significance, Pillais’
F(6, 37) ¼ 0.87, p ¼ .523.
Intercorrelations Between Frontal Memory Measures
A table of intercorrelations of selected frontal memory measures for
the entire data set (no trimming) is presented in Table 2. As for the
MANOVA, the measures selected for inclusion in the table are those
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 17

Table 2
Intercorrelations of Selected Frontal Memory Tasks (N ¼ 60)

Task 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Proactive interference – .42 .30 .07 .56 .48
2 Free recall – .02 .27 .27 .30
3 Perseverations (on free recall) – .09 .14 .23
4 Word sequencing – .07 .24
5 Total source errors – .21
6 Metamemory errors –
 p < .05,  p < .01.

that best discriminated between people with high versus low hypnotic
ability, according to the results from the ANOVAs reported above. The
tasks appeared to be modestly intercorrelated in the expected direc-
tions, with performance on the proactive-interference task (AC1) most
clearly related to most of the other measures. The pattern of results was
essentially the same when performed on the data set trimmed at two
SDs for each measure.

Discriminant Function Analysis

As predicted, participants with high hypnotic ability appeared to
perform somewhat poorly as compared to participants with low
hypnotic ability on a number of the frontal memory tasks. It therefore
became interesting to determine the degree to which performance on
such tasks might be used to discriminate between participants with
high and low hypnotic ability. The classification results of a stepwise
discriminant analysis of the entire data set are presented in Table 3.
Once again, the measures selected for inclusion in the analysis included
the measures likely to be most sensitive to differences between partic-
ipants, according to the results from the ANOVAs reported above.

Table 3
Classification Results of Stepwise Discriminant Analysis Used to Predict Hypnotic
Ability from Performance on Frontal Memory Tasks (N ¼ 60)

Actual Group Membership Number of Cases Predicted Group

Membership

Highs Lows
Highs 30 20 10
(66.7%) (33.3%)
Lows 30 7 23
(23.3%) (76.77%)
Note. Overall percent of cases correctly classified: 71.67%.
18 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

However, data from the word-sequencing task were not entered into
this analysis because the results obtained from that measure were so
contrary to what was predicted. Thus, the measures entered into the
discriminant function analysis included number of AC1 errors on the
proactive-interference task, number of words recalled on the fifth free-
recall trial, number of perseverations on the free-recall task, total
source-amnesia errors, and total metamemory errors. A subset of
two predictors, number of AC1 errors and number of target words
recalled on the fifth free-recall trial, correctly classifying 71.6% of all
participants. Of those high in hypnotic ability, 66.7% were correctly
classified, and the remaining 33.3% were incorrectly classified as lows.
Of those low in hypnotizability, 76.7% were correctly classified, and the
remaining 23.3% were incorrectly classified as highs. A corresponding
analysis of the data set trimmed at two SDs on each measure produced
similar results.

DISCUSSION

The principal result of this study is that participants with high

hypnotic ability consistently performed less well on a variety of frontal
memory tasks, compared to participants with low hypnotic ability.
Most strikingly, participants with high hypnotic ability performed
relatively poorly on the free-recall, proactive-interference, and
source-amnesia tasks. Somewhat surprisingly, these differences were
just as evident outside of the context of hypnosis as within it. In
addition, participants with high hypnotic ability performed just as
well as participants with low hypnotic ability on memory tasks not
considered to be specifically affected by impaired frontal lobe function-
ing, including the AB1 and MMFR trials in the proactive-interference
task, retrieval errors on the source-amnesia task, and recall and re-
cognition failures on the metamemory task (Shimamura, 1995).
Although the performances of participants with high and low hypnotic
ability were well within the range of normality, the small but significant
differences observed suggest a subtle association between hypnotic
susceptibility and frontal lobe function.
There has been some other recent interest in exploring the contribu-
tion of frontal lobe functioning to hypnotic ability, with mixed results.
Aikins and Ray (2001) reported that 9 participants with high hypnotic
ability performed better on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, widely
considered to be a measure of frontal lobe functioning, as compared to 7
participants with low hypnotic ability; whereas Kallio, Revonsuo,
Hämäläinen, Markela, and Gruzelier (2001) reported that participants
with high hypnotic ability performed less well on a word-fluency test,
another frontal lobe task, as compared to participants with low hyp-
notic ability. The present results are somewhat more consistent with
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 19

Kallio et al. than Aikins and Ray; however, neither of these other,
relatively small-sample studies involved the administration of a battery
of memory tasks.
The results of the present study are both broadly consistent with
what one would expect from a dissociated control perspective and also
somewhat inconsistent with it. It would appear that participants with
high hypnotic ability have difficulty with many of the same kinds of
tasks that frontal lobe patients are reported to have difficulty with,
indicating relatively weak executive control of memory. Such a finding
dovetails quite nicely with the dissociated control model of hypnotic
responding first proposed by Bowers (1992).
However, it was anticipated that the hypnotic context, including
provision of a hypnotic induction, would enhance any differences
between those of high versus low hypnotic ability, as was indeed
reported by Kallio et al. (2001); yet there was almost no evidence at
all in the present study to support this idea. The lack of context by
hypnotic ability interactions is surprising, given arguments and evi-
dence presented by Woody, Bowers, and Oakman (1992) about the
strong effect of a hypnotic context in many other studies. It also appears
to clash with a strong state position about the nature of hypnosis (cf.
Kirsch & Lynn, 1995). Experimental data reported by Ray (1997) and
broader, conceptual arguments by Kirsch (1997) likewise indicate that a
hypnotic induction may not be necessary for revealing differences due
to hypnotic susceptibility.
However, alternatively it seems possible that asking hypnotized
participants to complete a fairly extensive battery of demanding cog-
nitive tasks, such as the memory tasks used in this study, is simply
incompatible with maintaining a ‘‘state’’ of hypnosis. In order to
perform this battery of complex cognitive tasks, participants may have
‘‘alerted’’ themselves from hypnosis. In this view, participants with
high hypnotic ability who received an induction might be considered to
have been completing the tasks under essentially the same conditions
as participants who participated outside of the context of hypnosis. In
contrast, it may be possible that participants in previous studies who
completed only one memory task over a shorter duration were not
similarly alerted over time and may have been completing the tasks
while hypnotized. Such an explanation for state-related differences
across studies may fit with the concept of changes in attentional and
disattentional processes that occur during hypnosis, as proposed by
Crawford (1994).
Another possibility is that, rather than capturing what is essential to
describe a hypnotic state, altered frontal lobe functioning may be one of
the baseline individual characteristics of people with high hypnotic
ability that is necessary to attain this state. Finally, the absence of effects
for hypnotic induction and for interactions of hypnotic ability with
20 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

hypnotic induction could possibly have been the result of omitting the
middle range of hypnotic ability. Specifically, although people with
high hypnotic ability may be comparably different from people with
low hypnotic ability in and outside of the hypnotic state, the perfor-
mance of moderately susceptible subjects may possibly be more af-
fected by an induction.
Also contrary to expectations was the finding that on the word-
sequencing task participants with high hypnotic ability performed
better than those with low hypnotic ability. Specifically, the average
correlation between the actual study order and the order in which the
participant placed the cards during the organization task was higher
for participants with high hypnotic ability as compared to participants
with low hypnotic ability. This result seems quite inconsistent with
what one would expect from the dissociated control perspective.
However, it seems at least possible that in an undergraduate popula-
tion, such a task is not difficult enough and/or measures something
quite different from what it measures in a population of patients with
frontal lobe damage.
In retrospect, when compared to the temporal recency judgment task
of Milner, Corsi, and Leonard (1991), in which participants are shown
a long series of stimuli, either words or pictures, and occasionally
asked to make a judgment about which of two stimuli was presented
more recently, the word-sequencing task used in this study may
simply not have been a difficult enough interference task to find the
subtle differences we were looking for. Using a task very similar to
that of Milner, Corsi, and Leonard, in which participants are shown
a long series of stimulus words and occasionally asked to make a
judgment about which of two stimuli was presented more recently,
Vongphrachanh (1998) has demonstrated that participants with high
hypnotic ability tend to perform more poorly than participants with
low hypnotic ability, especially when making judgments about items
at moderate temporal distance from each other, i.e., when asked to
judge the relative recency of two items which are neither extremely
close nor extremely far apart in presentation.
Alternatively, there may be something about the word-sequencing
task that makes it different from the other tasks, on which subjects with
low hypnotic ability consistently did slightly better. Performance on the
word-sequencing task involves the intentional encoding and recall of
the order of the material presented. In contrast, the temporal disorga-
nization of recall is usually observed in tasks involving free recall of the
material encoded. These two types of tasks are quite different, and the
differential effect observed in this study may reflect a distinction
between the ability of highs and lows to recall temporal information
(here higher in highs) versus their spontaneous use of temporal ordering
as a strategy to facilitate free recall (lower in highs).
 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 21

In addition, it seems quite possible that ‘‘frontal executive control’’ is

not a monolithic entity and that different aspects of executive control may
be differently associated with hypnotic susceptibility (e.g., the double
dissociation of word-sequencing results with the other tasks). Although
speculative, such a possibility should be examined in future studies.
The pattern of results observed in this study seems relatively
difficult to explain from the sociocognitive (Spanos, 1986), dissociated
experience (Kihlstrom, 1992), or expectancy (Kirsch, 1997) theories of
hypnosis. According to these perspectives, any unsuggested effects of
hypnosis on memory are due to the more or less subtle demand
characteristics of the situation. Thus, an explanation of these data
would be that there was something about the experimental situation
that tipped off some participants to the relevance of their hypnotic
ability; as a result, participants in the nonhypnotic context performed in
the same way as participants in the hypnotic context (Kirsch & Council,
1992). However, great care was taken to make sure that participants
who participated in the experiment outside of the context of hypnosis
remained unaware of the relevance of their hypnotic ability until the
end of the second session. In addition, insofar as participants with high
hypnotic ability were responding to the demands of the situation in the
context of hypnosis, one would predict a pattern of poor performance
on all memory tasks. Instead, those high and low in hypnotic ability did
not differ in their performance on the various nonfrontal memory tasks
that served as checks.
Researchers of different theoretical backgrounds have recently be-
gun to speculate that the phenomena associated with hypnosis may be
best understood by a cautious integration of the sociocognitive and
dissociation accounts of hypnotic responding (Barber, 1999; Kihlstrom,
1997; Kirsch & Lynn, 1995; Woody & Sadler, 1998). For example, Barber
argues that some individuals achieve high scores on standard scales of
hypnotic ability by having a very positive ‘‘set’’ and high motivation,
whereas others achieve high scores as the result of being very good at
engaging in fantasy and imagination. In addition, he argues that some
individuals achieve high scores on standard scales of hypnotic ability
as the result of being prone to amnesic phenomena more generally. If
there is in fact a substantial subgroup of individuals with high hypnotic
ability who are prone to amnesic phenomena outside of the context of
hypnosis, the lack of context effects in the present study appears to be
somewhat less mysterious.
If these results are replicated in future research, an interesting
challenge is to explore what other individual difference variables might
distinguish people with high hypnotic ability who demonstrate am-
nesic (or dissociative) phenomena or altered frontal lobe functioning
outside of the context of hypnosis from those with high or moderate
hypnotic ability who do not.
22 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

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 HYPNOSIS, MEMORY, AND FRONTAL FUNCTION 25

Hypnose, Gedächtnis und die Funktion der frontalen Exekutive

Peter Farvolden und Erik Z. Woody

Zusammenfassung: Nach der von Woody und Bowers (1994) vorgebrachten
Hypothese der dissoziierten Kontrolle entsprechen die Auswirkungen
von Hypnose einer abgeschwächten Funktion des Frontallappens. Die
vorliegende Studie wurde entwickelt, um die Leistung von Versuchsperso-
nen mit hoher und niedriger Hypnosefähigkeit bei verschiedenen Gedächt-
nisaufgaben, die als sensitiv für eine solche Funktion gelten, sowie bei
einigen Kontrollaufgaben, für die das nicht gilt, zu vergleichen. Die Ergeb-
nisse deuten insgesamt darauf hin, dass Teilnehmer mit hoher Hypnosefä-
higkeit größere Schwierigkeiten bei Aufgaben haben, die sensitiv für die
Funktion des Frontallappens sind, wie etwa freier Abruf, proaktive Inter-
ferenz und Quellenamnesieaufgaben. Dies gilt sowohl innerhalb als auch
außerhalb des hypnotischen Kontext. Diese Unterschiede, welche nicht bei
nichtfrontalen Aufgaben auftraten, stützen allgemein die Theorie der dis-
soziierten Kontrolle des hypnotischen Verhaltens.
RALF SCHMAELZLE
University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

Hypnose, mémoire, et fonctionnement décisionnel du lobe frontal

Peter Farvolden et Erik Z. Woody

Résumé: Selon l’hypothèse de la commande dissociée formulée par Woody et
Bowers (1994), les effets de l’hypnose correspondent au fonctionnement
atténué du lobe frontal. Cette étude a été conçue pour comparer la perfor-
mance de participants aux capacités hypnotiques élevées et basses dans une
variété de tâches faisant appel à la mémoire et au fonctionnement du lobe
frontal, ainsi que quelques tâches de commande de mémoire considérées
comme non sensibles à un tel fonctionnement. Les résultats ont montré que
les participants ayant des capacités hypnotiques élevées ont eu plus de
difficulté avec des tâches faisant appel au lobe frontal, y compris le «rappel
libre», «l’ interférence proactive», et des tâches d’amnésie, tant en dedans
qu’en dehors du contexte de l’hypnose. Ces différences, qui n’ont pas été
trouvées pour des tâches non frontales, sont généralement le support de la
théorie de commande dissociée de la réponse hypnotique.
VICTOR SIMON
Psychosomatic Medicine & Clinical Hypnosis
Institute, Lille, France

Hipnosis, memoria, y funcionamiento ejecutivo frontal

Peter Farvolden y Erik Z. Woody

Resumen: Según la hipótesis de control disociado propuesta por Woody y
Bowers (1994), los efectos de la hipnosis son consistentes con un funciona-
miento disminuido del lóbulo frontal. Diseñamos este estudio para comparar
el desempeño de participantes con alta y baja capacidad hipnótica en una
26 PETER FARVOLDEN AND ERIK Z. WOODY

variedad de pruebas de memoria sensibles al funcionamiento del lóbulo

frontal, ası́ como en pruebas de memoria no sensibles a tal funcionamiento.
Los resultados generalmente indicaron que los participantes con alta capa-
cidad hipnótica tuvieron más dificultad con pruebas sensibles al fun-
cionamiento del lóbulo frontal, incluyendo pruebas de recuerdo libre,
interferencia proactiva, y amnesia del origen del recuerdo, tanto dentro como
fuera del contexto hipnótico. Estas diferencias, que no encontramos en
pruebas no frontales, apoyan en general la teorı́a de control disociado de
la respuesta hipnótica.
ETZEL CARDEÑA
University of Texas, Pan American, Edinburg,
Texas, USA