PrepTest 140, Section 1, Question 8
Many uses have been claimed for hypnosis, from(105 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AMany of the(8 more words not shown)
- BHypnosis cannot significantly(6 more words not shown)
- CRecalling events under(6 more words not shown)
- DWhat people recall(10 more words not shown)
- EVisual memory is(8 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
They remember a movie they never watched. Confidence clearly isn't enough to make a recollection accurate.
Everyone heard the music. Under hypnosis, one group was asked about that real experience, while the other was asked about a supposed film. The second group supplied recollections that were just as confident and detailed, even though the film experience hadn't happened.
That makes me cautious about treating a vivid answer as evidence of a good memory. But the passage hasn't concluded that hypnosis improves recall, and the question doesn't ask us to attack such a conclusion. It asks what the study supports.
What we’re looking for
I'd keep the finding modest: these people can provide confident accounts of something they didn't experience. We should look for an answer tied to what happened in this experiment, not try to decide everything hypnosis can or cannot do.
Working the answers
- A
The opening mentions addiction and phobias, but this study doesn't investigate those uses. A result about prompted recollections cannot establish that many claims across hypnosis's different uses are overstated. Our skepticism isn't a substitute for evidence about those claims.
- B
Producing some inaccurate recollections doesn't establish that hypnosis can never significantly improve recall. It might help with some real memories while also allowing false ones. The experiment also gives us no comparison with these subjects' recall without hypnosis that would settle this broad claim.
- C
Inevitably means every time. We know the film recollections don't describe an experience these subjects actually had, but we aren't told that the music recollections were false. Some false recollections don't establish that recalling anything under hypnosis always creates false memories.
- DCorrect
The film group was prompted to describe a film, then produced confident, detailed film recollections despite not having seen one. That gives us evidence that suggestion can shape what people report recalling under hypnosis. The cautious wording matters: the answer says suggestion has some influence, not that every recollection is entirely invented.
- E
There was no film experience for visual memory to preserve. A detailed account of an unseen movie isn't an enhanced visual memory; it's an account that cannot be an accurate recollection of that supposed viewing. We therefore cannot compare gains in visual and auditory memory on this basis.
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