Biomedical subjects

K H Moffitt

Publications and source records attributed to K H Moffitt.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1999

Expectancy and suggestibility: are the effects of environmental enhancement due to detection?

This study replicated the effect of Wickless and Kirsch's experiential expectancy manipulation, in which lights and music from hidden sources were used to convince participants that they were responding successfully to suggestions for visual and auditory hallucinations. The hypothesis that the effect is mediated by detection of the manipulation was tested by providing some participants with cues that their experiences were due to actual changes in the physical environment rather than to their responses to suggestion. This hypothesis was not confirmed. A significant effect on suggestibility was obtained only among participants not given cues aimed at enabling detection of the manipulation, and among those provided with the cues, suspicion of the manipulation was negatively correlated with response to suggestion.

Environment↗

PubMed1996

Reporting biases in hypnosis: suggestion or compliance?

The tendency of highly hypnotizable participants to bias their retrospective perceptual reports in response to instructional demands was reexamined with the addition of low-hypnotizable control participants instructed to simulate hypnosis. Mean scores of high-hypnotizable participants and simulators did not differ, but the responses of simulators to the demand instruction was less variable than those of high-hypnotizable participants, and the shape of the response distribution was different. Unlike simulators, some high-hypnotizable participants who had reported changes in perception that were consistent with a hypnotic suggestion subsequently reported changes opposite to those suggested by a demand instruction. These data were interpreted as suggesting that the responses of high-hypnotizable participants to both the demand instruction and the preceding hypnotic suggestion were not entirely due to compliance.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Depression and memory narrative type.

Research with autobiographical memories has distinguished between memory narratives of specific events and summaries of many events blended together. Depression has been associated with a reduced ability to retrieve and orally relate specific positive memories. This study explored the hedonic bias in memory through collection of written autobiographical memories from 90 nonclinical college students whose mood was assessed for depression. Participants with higher depression scores recalled significantly more summary memories in response to a request for a positive self-defining memory than did participants with lower depression scores. There were no significant differences in the number of single-event and summary memories when participants were asked for a negative memory. We used J. A. Singer and K. H. Moffitt's (1991-1992) scoring system to distinguish between summarized and specific memory narratives.

Adolescent↗