Event-related Potential Correlates of Suggested Hypnotic Amnesia

I t has long been established that hypnotized subjects sometimes act in accordance with suggestions that they will not be able to remember specific information or events until given a retrieval cue (1-4). Subjects who exhibit this behavior, known as suggested hypnotic amnesia, when tested for recall, report none or only a portion of the specific information targeted by the amnesia suggestion. After they receive the retrieval cue, they then report recalling more, or all, of the previously inaccessible information. Considerable controversy surrounds the explanation of this phenomenon. What is going on in the mind of the subject acting under the influence of an induced suggestion for hypnotic amnesia? Subjects frequently report experiencing a temporary involuntary inability to recall the suggested information. These reports are consistent with the notion that the information for which subjects are hypnotically amnesic is being stored in a special manner precluding consciousness of the information (5). In general, cognitive perspectives regard hypnotic amnesia as a genuine phenomenon of memory similar to clinical amnesia and perhaps related to motivated forgetting (2-4,6). From this point of view, subjects reporting hypnotic amnesia are experiencing an actual disturbance of memory a blocking or interference with retrieval processes. A contrary view sees hypnotic amnesia as mere behavioral compliance. According to this account, subjects are fully conscious of the information for which amnesia has been suggested: they remember the information perfectly well, but simply are not reporting it, playing a role in accordance with the demand characteristics of the experiment (7-9). From this perspective, suggested hypnotic amnesia is seen as nothing more than a reporting inhibition motivated by social-psychological factors in the Event-related Potential Correlates of Suggested Hypnotic Amnesia Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. and Philip G. Zimbardo, Ph.D.