Developmental psychology.pdf

170 Modes of Awareness
A most important consideration is the lack of any significant correlation between
hypnotic suggestibility—that is, the tendency to be hypnotizable—and the reduction
of addictive behavior. If the hypnotic state per se is an integral part of the
treatment, one would expect a relationship between hypnotic susceptibility and treatment
outcomes. But in hypnotherapy for smoking and for obesity there is no significant
association.
Such findings may appear to support the dissociation view of hypnosis, but
further data are needed. For instance, we need to know more about the correlation
between hypnotic suggestibility and the reduction of experiential problems, which may
constitute evidence for the suggestibility viewpoint. Ultimately these two views may
not be incompatible. There are large individual differences in susceptibility to hypnosis,
and we may understand the source of these differences through some combinations
of studies on information processing under hypnosis (Sheehan & Tilden, 1984).
PERCEPTION AND LEARNING
Victor had no involvement with drugs or hypnosis, as far as we know, but judged by
the standards of contemporary society he certainly did not have a normal awareness
when he first appeared before Itard. Presumably influenced by years of exposure to
only the wilderness, he showed many perceptual limitations.
Victor apparently suffered a learning defect, and his case shows that many
perceptual abilities must be learned. But he was not deficient in several respects—
figure-ground relations, perceptual constancies, the gestalt principles of grouping, and
color discrimination. These and other basic dimensions of human perception appear
largely inborn. The case of the Wild Boy emphasizes the contributions of both sets of
factors, inborn and acquired, in human perception.
Victor, in his earlier animal life, developed other forms of awareness, apart
from human civilization. He assured himself of Madame Guerin's presence by smelling
her hands. He was transfixed by the light of the moon. The sound of a cracking nut or
other edible never failed to elicit a response. Soon after his capture, Victor developed
an exquisite sensitivity to the sound of the key in his door, even if it was merely touched,
running quickly to the place where the sound originated. He showed a keen awareness
of any sound connected with his former and current physical interests.
It is a matter of no small significance that a person responds perceptually to
those stimuli relevant to his or her interests. When a society has patterned a person's
interests and trained him or her to expect certain things, it has gained a significant
measure of control over that person's thought processes. It has also gained a distinct
measure of control over the very material on which that thought operates—the experienced
data of perception (Bruner, 1955).
In the forest Victor became especially sensitive to any stimulus informing him
of an approaching animal or the fall of some fruit. These were the events he experienced
and about which he thought, just as the zoologist, after years of study and research,
is prompted to perceive and to think about aspects of animal life that other
people ignore. Sensation and perception, sometimes referred to as the first causes of
behavior, merge imperceptibly with learning as we take our place in human society.
A prisoner of his earlier deprivation, Victor had missed a vital opportunity for
learning the sounds of human speech. Even after he acquired his only two expressions,
"milk" and "oh, God," he uttered them at any unexpected moment, like a parrot, with
no understanding whatsoever of their potential significance. Something apparently had
been irretrievably lost in those earliest years, and here we see the importance of learning,
the topic of our next chapter. Victor never learned to talk even though he lived to
the age of 40 and had five years of the most ingenious and industrious training imaginable.