In a Model of Neuroinflammation Designed to Mimic Delirium, Quetiapine Reduces Cortisol Secretion and Preserves Reversal Learning in the Attentional Set Shifting Task.

Quetiapine, an atypical antipsychotic medication has lacked pre-clinical validation for its purported benefits in the treatment of delirium. This laboratory investigation examined the effects of quetiapine on the attentional set shifting task (ASST), a measure of cognitive flexibility and executive functioning, in a rodent model of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) mediated neuroinflammation. 19 Sprague Dawley female rats were randomly selected to receive intraperitoneal placebo (N = 5), LPS and placebo (N = 7) or LPS and quetiapine (n = 7) and performed the ASST. We measured trials to criterion, errors, non-locomotion episodes and latency to criterion, serum cortisol and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) levels. TNF-α levels were not different between groups at 24 h. Cortisol levels in the LPS + Quetiapine group were reduced compared to LPS + Placebo (P < 0.001) and did not differ from the placebo group (P = 0.15). Analysis between LPS + Quetiapine and LPS + Placebo treated rats demonstrated improvement in the compound discrimination reversal (CD Rev1) (P = 0.016) and the intra-dimensional reversal (ID Rev2) (P = 0.007) discriminations on trials to criterion. LPS + Quetiapine treated rats had fewer errors than LPS + Placebo treated animals in the compound discrimination (CD) (P = 0.007), CD Rev1 (P = 0.005), ID Rev2 (P < 0.001) discriminations. There was no difference in non-locomotion frequency or latency to criterion between the three groups in all discriminations (P > 0.0167). We demonstrated preserved reversal learning, no effect on attentional set shifting and normalized cortisol levels in quetiapine-treated rats in this neuroinflammatory model of delirium. This suggests that quetiapine's beneficial effects in delirium may be related to the preservation of reversal learning and potential downstream effects related to reduction in cortisol production. Graphical Abstract.

Neuropathic Pain Creates an Enduring Prefrontal Cortex Dysfunction Corrected by the Type II Diabetic Drug Metformin But Not by Gabapentin.

Chronic pain patients suffer from pain-related cognitive deficits, even when taking commonly prescribed analgesics. These deficits are likely related to pain-related maladaptive plasticity in the frontal cortex. We sought to model cognitive deficits in mice with neuropathic pain to examine maladaptive morphological plasticity in the mPFC and to assess the effects of several therapeutics. We used an attentional set-shifting task in mice with spared nerve injury (SNI) who received either a single intrathecal injection of an analgesic dose of clonidine, 7 d of 100 mg/kg gabapentin, or 7 d of 200 mg/kg metformin. Male SNI mice were significantly more impaired in the set-shifting task than females. This deficit correlated with a loss of parvalbumin (PV) and reductions in axon initial segment (AIS) length in layers 5/6 of the infralimbic (IL) cortex. Acute pain relief with clonidine had no effect on set-shifting performance, whereas pain relief via 7 day treatment with gabapentin worsened the impairment in both SNI and sham mice. Gabapentin reversed the PV loss in the IL but had no effect on AIS length. Treatment with the AMPK-activator metformin completely reversed the pain-related cognitive impairment and restored AIS length in the IL but had little effect on PV expression. Our findings reveal that neuropathic pain-related cognitive impairments in male mice are correlated to bilateral morphological changes in PV interneurons and layer 5/6 IL pyramidal neuron AIS. Pain relief with metformin can reverse some of the functional and anatomical changes.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Cognitive impairments are a comorbidity of neuropathic pain but are inadequately addressed by existing therapeutics. We used a neuropathic pain model in mice to demonstrate that male (but not female) mice show a robust pain-related deficit in attentional set-shifting, which is associated with structural plasticity in axon initial segments in the infralimbic cortex. These deficits were completely reversed by 7 day treatment with the antidiabetic drug metformin, suggesting that this drug can be repurposed for the treatment of neuropathic pain and its cognitive comorbidities. Our findings have implications for our understanding of how neuropathic pain causes structural plasticity in the brain, and they point to a marked sexual dimorphism in neuropathic pain mechanisms in mice.

Evaluation of the epistemic state of the speaker/author.

Language users are sensitive to their language's grammatical requirements, the plausibility of the situation described and the information shared by speaker and listener. We propose that they are also sensitive to whether an author is likely to be in a state of knowledge that actually supports the assertion being made. Failure to be in such a state reduces the naturalness of the assertion. Consistent with this proposal, sentences with a disjoined noun phrase are judged to be less natural than their conjunctive counterparts, presumably because the author of a disjunctive sentence must know that an event took place but not know which of the two individuals was the agent. This unlikely state of knowledge reduces the naturalness of the sentence. The results of three experiments indicate that providing evidence that the speaker could be in an unlikely epistemic state reduces the disjunction penalty; a fourth extends the demonstration of the penalty from coordinated noun phrases to coordinated verb phrases. We also present one experiment that explores the possibility that disjunction penalty is due to the unexpectedness of a disjunction. These findings demonstrate that language users evaluate linguistic input in light of the epistemic state of its author.

Psicología positiva, educación emocional y el programa aulas felices / No disponible

La psicología positiva tiene múltiples aplicaciones. En este artículo nos centramos en la educación formal, de los 3 a los 18 años. Se expone como el desarrollo del bienestar debería ser una de las finalidades de la educación, lo cual repercutiría en el profesorado, alumnado, familias y por extensión a la sociedad en general. La educación emocional (Bisquerra, 2000, 2009), desde sus orígenes, ha tenido esto claro. Con el surgimiento de la psicología positiva se produjo un renovado esfuerzo en este sentido, como una mejor fundamentación. El GROP (Grup de Recerca en Orientación Psicopedagógica) de la Universidad de Barcelona está realizando investigaciones en esta línea. Aulas Felices es el primer programa en lengua castellana de psicología positiva aplicada a la educación; dirigido a alumnado de educación infantil, primaria y secundaria. El programa centra sus aplicaciones en las fortalezas personales y la atención plena; es gratuito y de libre distribución. En el artículo se argumenta sobre la importancia de potenciar el bienestar en la educación, se presentan actividades prácticas y estrategias de intervención, con especial referencia a la formación del profesorado

Positive psychology has multiple applications. This article is focused on formal education, from the ages of 3 to 18 years. The development of well-being should be one of the aims of education, which would affect teachers, students, families and by extension society at large. This has been a clear aim for emotional education (Bisquerra, 2000, 2009), from the outset. With the emergence of positive psychology, there was a renewed effort in this direction, as a means of providing a better foundation. The GROP (Grup de Recerca en Orientación Psicopedagógica [Research in Psychopedagogical Education Group]) at the University of Barcelona is conducting research on this subject. The Happy Classrooms ("Aulas felices") program developed by the SATI Team is the first program in Spanish aimed at working on positive education. It is designed for children and youths in pre-school, primary and secondary education. The program focuses its applications on character strengths and mindfulness. It is freely available for access and distribution. This article argues for the importance of enhancing well-being in education. Practical activities and intervention strategies are presented, with special reference to the importance of teacher training

How prior expectations shape multisensory perception.

The brain generates a representation of our environment by integrating signals from a common source, but segregating signals from different sources. This fMRI study investigated how the brain arbitrates between perceptual integration and segregation based on top-down congruency expectations and bottom-up stimulus-bound congruency cues. Participants were presented audiovisual movies of phonologically congruent, incongruent or McGurk syllables that can be integrated into an illusory percept (e.g. "ti" percept for visual «ki¼ with auditory /pi/). They reported the syllable they perceived. Critically, we manipulated participants' top-down congruency expectations by presenting McGurk stimuli embedded in blocks of congruent or incongruent syllables. Behaviorally, participants were more likely to fuse audiovisual signals into an illusory McGurk percept in congruent than incongruent contexts. At the neural level, the left inferior frontal sulcus (lIFS) showed increased activations for bottom-up incongruent relative to congruent inputs. Moreover, lIFS activations were increased for physically identical McGurk stimuli, when participants segregated the audiovisual signals and reported their auditory percept. Critically, this activation increase for perceptual segregation was amplified when participants expected audiovisually incongruent signals based on prior sensory experience. Collectively, our results demonstrate that the lIFS combines top-down prior (in)congruency expectations with bottom-up (in)congruency cues to arbitrate between multisensory integration and segregation.

Examining the predictive role of self-compassion on flourishing in Turkish university students / Examen del papel predictivo de la autocompasión sobre el bienestar psicológico (flourishing) en estudiantes universitarios de Turquía

Examen del papel predictivo de la autocompasión sobre el bienestar psicológico (flourishing) en estudiantes universitarios de Turquía. Resumen: El propósito de este estudio es examinar el papel predictivo de la autocompasión sobre el flourishing. Los participantes fueron 278 estudiantes universitarios (153 mujeres, 125 hombres; edad media = 20.5 años). En este estudio, la Escala de Autocompasión y la escala de Flourishing fueron examinadas usando análisis correlacional y análisis de regresión lineal múltiple. En el análisis correlacional, los factores de auto-benevolencia, condición humana y atención plena de la autocompasión tuvieron relación positiva con el flourishing, y auto-valoración, aislamiento y sobre identificación tuvieron relación negativa. Según los resultados de regresión, flourishing fue predicho negativamente por la auto-valoración, el aislamiento y la sobre-identificación. Además, la auto-benevolencia y la atención plena predicen el flourishing de modo positivo. La autocompasión explicó el 47% de la varianza del flourishing. Los resultados se discuten a la luz de la literatura

The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive role of self-compassion on flourishing. Participants were 278 university students (153 women, 125 men). In this study, the Self-compassion Scale and the Flourishing Scale were used. The relationships between self-compassion and flourishing were examined using correlation and regression analysis. In correlation analysis, self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness factors of self-compassion were found positively and self-judgment, isolation, and over-identification factors of self-compassion were found negatively related to flourishing. According to regression results, flourishing was predicted negatively by self-judgment, isolation, and over-identification. Further self-kindness and mindfulness predicted flourishing in a positive way. Self-compassion has explained 47% of the variance in flourishing. Results were discussed in the light of related literature

The survival advantage: Underlying mechanisms and extant limitations.

Recently, researchers have begun to investigate the function of memory in our evolutionary history. According to Nairne and colleagues (e.g., Nairne, Pandeirada, and Thompson, 2008; Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada, 2007), the best mnemonic strategy for learning lists of unrelated words may be one that addresses the same problems that our Pleistocene ancestors faced: fitness-relevant problems including securing food and water, as well as protecting themselves from predators. Survival processing has been shown to promote better recall and recognition memory than many well-known mnemonic strategies (e.g., pleasantness ratings, imagery, generation, etc.). However, the survival advantage does not extend to all types of stimuli and tasks. The current review presents research that has replicated Nairne et al.'s (2007) original findings, in addition to the research designs that fail to replicate the survival advantage. In other words, there are specific manipulations in which survival processing does not appear to benefit memory any more than other strategies. Potential mechanisms for the survival advantage are described, with an emphasis on those that are the most plausible. These proximate mechanisms outline the memory processes that may contribute to the advantage, although the ultimate mechanism may be the congruity between the survival scenario and Pleistocene problem-solving.

Children's memory and suggestibility about a distressing event: the role of children's and parents' attachment.

Our goal was to identify individual difference predictors of children's memory and suggestibility for distressing personally experienced events. Specifically, we examined children's and parents' attachment orientations and children's observable levels of distress, as well as other individual difference factors, as predictors of children's memory and suggestibility. Children (N=91) aged 3 to 6years were interviewed about inoculations received at medical clinics. For children whose parents scored as more avoidant, higher distress levels during the inoculations predicted less accuracy, whereas for children whose parents scored as less avoidant, higher distress levels predicted greater accuracy. Children with more rather than less positive representations of parents and older rather than younger children answered memory questions more accurately. Two children provided false reports of child sexual abuse. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

Looking up to others: Social status, Chinese honorifics, and spatial attention.

Two experiments were carried out to investigate whether social status encoded in Chinese honorifics has metaphorical effects on up-down spatial orientation. In Experiment 1, participants judged whether a word was an elevating or denigrating term immediately prior to judging whether an arrow was pointing up or down. Arrow orientation was identified faster when its direction was congruent with the perceived social status of the preceding honorific (e.g., elevating word and up arrow). In Experiment 2, participants identified the letter p or q after judging whether honorifics were elevating or denigrating terms. Letters were identified faster when placed at the top of the screen following elevating terms, and faster at the bottom following denigrating terms. These results suggest that the mere activation of social status differences by honorific terms orients attention toward schema-congruent space. Social status appears to have pragmatic effects, not only for lexical decision-making, but also in where Chinese speakers are most likely to look.

A prospective randomised control study: reduction of children's pain expectation using a picture book during blood withdrawal.

OBJECTIVES: Blood drawings are very painful and stressful for children. In a prospective control group study we investigated if using a picture book could reduce the children's pain expectation. In addition, the children's pain experience and the observed pain behaviour was monitored. PATIENTS/METHODS: Block-randomization were used and 120 children at the age of 6-12 years who were visiting the general pediatric and coagulation outpatient clinics were included in this study. Pain expectation and experience were assessed with the Face-Pain-Scale-Revised and the pain behavior with the Faces-Legs-Activity-Cry-Consolability Scale. Multivariate covariance analysis was used for data analysis. RESULTS: The results showed that with statistical controlling the influence of the primary pain expectation (baseline) the pain expectation before blood withdrawal was reduced significantly (p=0.001) and effectively (ES=0.56) using the picture book. Children who received no local anaesthesia reported that they felt less pain during blood drawing after reading the picture book. The few children with local anaesthesia reported no benefit from the picture book. The observed use of local anaesthesia was very heterogeneous. CONCLUSIONS: The results recommend the usage of this picture book in everyday practice, if the use of local anaesthesia could not be used in an appropriate way.

Differential roles of thought suppression and dispositional mindfulness in posttraumatic stress symptoms and craving.

Exposure to traumatic events often results in severe distress which may elicit self-medication behaviors. Yet, some individuals exposed to trauma do not develop post-traumatic stress symptoms and comorbid addictive impulses. In the wake of traumatic events, psychological processes like thought suppression and mindfulness may modulate post-traumatic stress and craving for substances. We examined the differential roles of mindfulness and suppression in comorbid post-traumatic stress and craving among a sample of 125 persons with extensive trauma histories and psychiatric symptoms in residential treatment for substance dependence. Results indicated that thought suppression, rather than extent of trauma history, significantly predicted post-traumatic stress symptom severity while dispositional mindfulness significantly predicted both post-traumatic stress symptoms and craving. In multiple regression models, mindfulness and thought suppression combined explained nearly half of the variance in post-traumatic stress symptoms and one-quarter of the variance in substance craving. Moreover, multivariate path analysis indicated that prior traumatic experience was associated with greater thought suppression, which in turn was correlated with increased post-traumatic stress symptoms and drug craving, whereas dispositional mindfulness was associated with decreased suppression, post-traumatic stress, and craving. The maladaptive strategy of thought suppression appears to be linked with adverse psychological consequences of traumatic life events. In contrast, dispositional mindfulness appears to be a protective factor that buffers individuals from experiencing more severe post-traumatic stress symptoms and craving.

Predicting changes in delusional ideation: the role of mindfulness and negative schemas.

OBJECTIVES: Understanding factors that contribute to delusional ideation has important clinical implications. This study looked at the impact of mindfulness and negative schemas on changes in delusional ideation over time. DESIGN: A sample of University students was selected to investigate processes related to delusional ideation in a non-clinical sample. METHOD: A web-based survey was completed by 700 University students, 204 of whom completed a second identical survey after 6 months, to comprise the longitudinal sample. RESULTS: Results from the study demonstrated that negative schemas and mindfulness were related to changes in delusional ideation over time and support was found for a mediated model, whereby mindfulness mediated the impact of schemas on the outcome. CONCLUSIONS: The findings point to the importance of mindfulness as an intervention for preventing non-clinical delusional ideation transitioning into clinical delusions.

Effects of expectations on loudness and loudness difference.

To determine how expectations affect loudness and loudness difference, in two experiments we induced some subjects to expect loud sounds (condition L), some to expect soft sounds (condition S), and others to have no particular expectations (control). In Experiment 1, all subjects estimated the loudnesses of the same set of three moderately loud 1-kHz tones. Estimates were greatest for subjects in condition S and smallest for subjects in condition L. Control subjects' estimates were intermediate but closer to those of condition S subjects. In Experiment 2, subjects estimated the difference in loudness for pairs of moderately loud 1-kHz tones. Again, estimates were smallest for condition L subjects; estimates were greatest for control subjects, and condition S subjects' estimates were closer to control estimates than to condition L estimates. This pattern of results is explainable by a combination of (1) Parducci's (1995) range-frequency theory and (2) a gain control mechanism in the auditory system under top-down governance (Schneider, Parker, & Murphy, 2011).

Age differences in the effects of experimenter-instructed versus self-generated strategy use.

UNLABELLED: Background/Study Context: Interactive imagery is superior to rote repetition as an encoding strategy for paired associate (PA) recall. Younger and older individuals often rate these strategies as equally effective before they gain experience using each strategy. The present study investigated how experimenter-supervised and participant-chosen strategy experience affected younger and older adults' knowledge about the effectiveness of these two strategies. METHODS: Ninety-nine younger (M = 19.0 years, SD = 1.4) and 90 older adults (M = 70.4 years, SD = 5.2) participated in the experiment. In learning a first PA list participants were either instructed to use imagery or repetition to study specific items (supervised) or could choose their own strategies (unsupervised). All participants were unsupervised on a second PA list to evaluate whether strategy experience affected strategy knowledge, strategy use, and PA recall. RESULTS: Both instruction groups learned about the superiority of imagery use through task experience, downgrading repetition ratings and upgrading imagery ratings on the second list. However, older adults showed less knowledge updating than did younger adults. Previously supervised younger adults increased their imagery use, improving PA recall; older adults maintained a higher level of repetition use. CONCLUSION: Older adults update knowledge of the differential effectiveness of the rote and imagery strategies, but to a lesser degree than younger adults. Older adults manifest an inertial tendency to continue using the repetition strategy even though they have learned that it is inferior to interactive imagery.

Differential contributions of set-shifting and monitoring to dual-task interference.

It is commonly argued that complex behaviour is regulated by a number of "executive functions", which work to coordinate the operation of disparate cognitive systems in the service of an overall goal. However, the identity, roles, and interactions of specific putative executive functions remain contentious, even within widely accepted tests of executive function. The authors present two experiments that use dual-task interference to provide further support for multiple distinct executive functions and to establish the differential contributions of those functions in two relatively complex executive tasks-random generation and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Results are interpreted in terms of process models of the complex executive tasks.

Ready, set, reset: stimulus-locked periodicity in behavioral performance demonstrates the consequences of cross-sensory phase reset.

The simultaneous presentation of a stimulus in one sensory modality often enhances target detection in another sensory modality, but the neural mechanisms that govern these effects are still under investigation. Here, we test a hypothesis proposed in the neurophysiological literature: that auditory facilitation of visual-target detection operates through cross-sensory phase reset of ongoing neural oscillations (Lakatos et al., 2009). To date, measurement limitations have prevented this potentially powerful neural mechanism from being directly linked with its predicted behavioral consequences. The present experiment uses a psychophysical approach in humans to demonstrate, for the first time, stimulus-locked periodicity in visual-target detection, following a temporally informative sound. Our data further demonstrate that periodicity in behavioral performance is strongly influenced by the probability of audiovisual co-occurrence. We argue that fluctuations in visual-target detection result from cross-sensory phase reset, both at the moment it occurs and persisting for seconds thereafter. The precise frequency at which this periodicity operates remains to be determined through a method that allows for a higher sampling rate.

Responding to hypnotic and nonhypnotic suggestions: performance standards, imaginative suggestibility, and response expectancies.

This study examined the relative impact of hypnotic inductions and several other variables on hypnotic and nonhypnotic responsiveness to imaginative suggestions. The authors examined how imaginative suggestibility, response expectancies, motivation to respond to suggestions, and hypnotist-induced performance standards affected participants' responses to both hypnotic and nonhypnotic suggestions and their suggestion-related experiences. Suggestions were administered to 5 groups of participants using a test-retest design: (a) stringent performance standards; (b) lenient performance standards; (c) hypnosis test-retest; (d) no-hypnosis test-retest; and (e) no-hypnosis/hypnosis control. The authors found no support for the influence of a hypnotic induction or performance standards on responding to suggestions but found considerable support for the role of imaginative suggestibility and response expectancies in predicting responses to both hypnotic and nonhypnotic suggestions.

The shielding function of task sets and its relaxation during task switching.

The goal of the presented experiments was to investigate the dynamic interplay of task shielding and its relaxation during task switching. Task shielding refers to the finding that single task sets in terms of 2-choice categorization rules help shielding against distraction from irrelevant stimulus attributes. During task switching, this shielding should temporarily be relaxed to prevent the perseveration of the previous task, on the downside making the system more vulnerable toward the intrusion of irrelevant information. Participants had to switch between a digit and a letter categorization task. An irrelevant stimulus feature (Experiment 1: color, Experiment 2: font) varied randomly, orthogonal to the task. The presence or absence of an interaction of the irrelevant feature (switch vs. repetition) and the response (switch vs. repetition) was taken as evidence for the absence or presence of task shielding, respectively. Replicating previous results, irrelevant feature and response did not interact on task repetitions, indicating successful shielding. On task switches, however, the irrelevant feature interacted with the response, supporting the assumption that task shielding is temporarily relaxed during task switching.

Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Reduces Depression and Anxiety Induced by Real Stressful Setting in Non-clinical Population

A randomized, controlled study was conducted in a non-clinical population to investigate the impact of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) on depression, anxiety, automatic thoughts, and dysfunctional attitudes, normally induced by exam as a real stressful setting. The participants were randomly assigned either to receive 8 weekly 2.5- hour MBCT or remain in a waiting list control group. A series of two-way ANOVA with repeated measures were performed to detect if the application of MBCT would result in a systematic reduction in the dependent variables over five assessment points: pre-test, session 4, session 8, first follow-up (1 month) and second follow-up (6 months). The results indicated that MBCT was effective at helping participants to deal with their anxiety and depressive feelings before, during and after stressful circumstances. In addition, the reductions in negative automatic thoughts and dysfunctional attitudes in those who received MBCT were significant. The findings provide further evidence that MBCT might be a useful intervention for enhancing well-being in non-clinical populations who are susceptible to experience anxiety and depression in real life situations (AU)

Se realizó un estudio aleatorio controlado en una población no-clínica para analizar el impacto de la terapia cognitiva basada en mindfulness (TCBPC) sobre la depresión, la ansiedad, los pensamientos automáticos y las actitudes disfuncionales, inducidas por situa- ciones de examen en contextos universitarios. Los participantes fueron asignados al azar para recibir 8 sesiones semanales de 2.5 horas de TCBPC o permanecer en lista de espera como grupo control. Se utilizó un análisis de varianza de medidas repetidas para ver si la aplicación de la TCBPC causa la reducción sistemática de las variables dependientes a lo largo de cinco mediciones: pre-test, sesión 4, sesión 8, primer seguimiento (1 mes) y segundo seguimiento (6 meses). Los resultados indicaron que la TCBPC resultó efectiva para manejar la ansiedad y los sentimientos depresivos antes, durante y después de las situaciones estresantes. Además, la reducción en los pensamientos automáticos y las actitudes disfuncionales fueron significativas entre los participantes que recibieron TCBPC. Los resultados aportan evidencia adicional en el sentido de que la TCBPC puede ser una intervención útil para mejorar el bienestar en poblaciones no-clínicas susceptibles de experimentar ansiedad y depresión en situaciones de la vida real (AU)

Reply to Wagstaff: "Hypnosis and the relationship between trance, suggestion, expectancy, and depth: some semantic and conceptual issues".

Wagstaff (2010) reviews and comments on two recent papers by Pekala et al. (2010a, 2010b), concluding that "many of the problems relating to the definition and conceptualization of terms associated with hypnosis... may stem from insufficient attention to the role of suggestion and expectancies in producing hypnotic phenomena, and an over-reliance on the role of the procedures and mechanics of the induction process" (p. 47). Although I agree with his semantic and conceptual focus, I believe that a number of these problems are due to not operationally defining terms such as hypnosis, hypnotic state, or trance in a comprehensive phenomenological manner. By using the PCI (Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory) via retrospective phenomenological assessment, and using a phenomenological state instrument like the PCI-HAP (Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory - Hypnotic Assessment Procedure) to obtain a state measure of hypnotic responsiveness, a means is available to define and empirically address some of these issues in a way that can significantly further our understanding of the nature of hypnotism. Such an approach might also address Kallio and Revonsuo's (2005) admonition concerning the need to develop "an internally coherent and widely shared theoretical vocabulary" (p. 51) to better understand consciousness, altered states of consciousness, and related phenomena, such as hypnosis/hypnotism.