Developmental Experiments in Hypnosis

Two-hundred-forty children, including ten boys and girls at each year level from five through sixteen, were selected from the entire public school population of a small city for testing on the Children's Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale. For most of these children, testing was repeated yearly for the next two years. Reliability for the Children's Scale was quite satisfactory for individual prediction. There were absolutely no differences in the hypnotic susceptibility of boys and girls in this sample. Intelligence had only low positive correlations with susceptibility. The correlation of age with susceptibility, measured either cross-sectionally or longitudinally, is positive and significant, but small. Changes in individual performance over time are generally minimal, and hypnotic susceptibility may be considered a relatively stable component of personality structure.