Reply to “Methodological and Interpretative Issues regarding thePhenomenology of Consciousness Inventory — Hypnotic Assessment Procedure: A Comment on Pekala et al. (2010a, 2010b)”

The "Mysteries of Hypnosis:" Helping Us Better Understand Hypnosis and Empathic Involvement Theory (EIT)

Wickramasekera II (2015) has penned a comprehensive and thoughtful review article demonstrating how empathy is intimately involved in the psychology and neurophysiology of hypnosis and the self. Hypnosis is a very "mental" or subjective phenomenon for both the client and the research participant. To better assess the mind of the client/participant during hypnosis, it is my belief that we need to generate more "precise" phenomenological descriptors of the mind during hypnosis and related empathic conditions, as Wickramasekera II (2015) has suggested in his article. Although any phenomenological methodology will have its limits and disadvantages, noetics (as defined in the article below) can help us better understand hypnosis, empathic involvement theory, and the brain/mind/behavior interface. By quantifying the mind in a comprehensive manner, just as the brain is comprehensively quantified via fMRI and qEEG technologies, noetic analysis can help us more precisely assess the mind and relate it to the brain and human behavior and experience.

Imagery vividness before and during the PCI-HAP: a partial replication

This study sought to replicate an earlier study wherein imagery vividness before and during a phenomenological hypnotic assessment procedure was assessed, while also measuring trance (hypnoidal) state effects and several other variables. Correlational and regression analyses for that study suggested that imagery vividness during hypnotism was predicted by combined imagery vividness before hypnotism and trance (altered) state effects during hypnotism. The present study procured a larger sample employing a similar design and a similar subject pool. With the current study, although trance state effects and imagery vividness before hypnotism still significantly predicted hypnotic imagoic suggestibility (imagery during hypnotism), the variance accounted for was appreciably less. The meaning of these results as a function of the methodology used is discussed.

A cross-validation of two differing measures of hypnotic depth

Several sets of regression analyses were completed, attempting to predict 2 measures of hypnotic depth: the self-reported hypnotic depth score and hypnoidal state score from variables of the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory: Hypnotic Assessment Procedure (PCI-HAP). When attempting to predict self-reported hypnotic depth, an R of .78 with Study 1 participants shrank to an r of .72 with Study 2 participants, suggesting mild shrinkage for this more attributional measure of hypnotic depth. Attempting to predict hypnoidal state (an estimate of trance) using the same procedure, yielded an R of .56, that upon cross-validation shrank to an r of .48. These and other results suggest that, although there is some variance in common, the self-reported hypnotic depth score appears to be tapping a different construct from the hypnoidal state score.