Hypnotic susceptibility and verbal automaticity: Automatic and strategic processing differences in the Stroop color-naming task.

The original hypothesis of M. Dixon et al (1990) that highly hypnotizable (HH) Ss process words more automatically than do low hypnotizable (LH) Ss was retested in a paradigm that separated strategic from automatic processes in the Stroop color-naming task. The words red and blue preceded a color patch that was red or blue. Ss were told that the word predicted the opposite color 75% of the time. Automatic and strategic processes were assessed by varying interstimulus interval (ISI) between the word and the color patch. Both HH and LH Ss showed significant strategic effects (faster incongruent-trial, color-naming reaction times [RTs] than congruent-trial RTs at ISIs over 400 msec), but only HH Ss showed significant automaticity (significantly faster congruent-trial RTs than incongruent-trial RTs at 16.7 msec, the lowest ISI). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)