Hypnotic Susceptibility in Middle Childhood

Abstract

A sample of 48 children, 32 boys and 16 girls, aged 6 through 12, tested on Part I of London's adaptation of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, showed a mean hypnotic susceptibility score higher than that of the standardization sample of adults, but not significantly different from scores obtained from volunteer samples of college-age adults. The children were more successful than the volunteer adults on hallucinations, posthypnotic amnesia, and posthypnotic suggestion, but they were much less successful than the adult subjects on eye closure and somewhat less on eye catalepsy. While there are some differences in instructions between the children's scale and the adult scale, it is conjectured that the differences in responsiveness as found are not to be attributed solely to the differences in the scales. Neither sex nor age differences were established within these samples. For 15 pairs of children from the same homes there was no appreciable correlation between scores. A birth-order effect could not be demonstrated. The results indicate the feasibility of undertaking longitudinal and family studies of hypnotic susceptibility in seeking answers to a number of significant problems.