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HYrNosrs,
AUTOGENIC
RELAXATION,
AND
QUIET REST
9
expectancies. Upon arrival at the laboratory, participants completed a
24-hour history dealing with physical activity, dietary, and sleep pat-
terns, as well as a self-estimateof general well-being in order to identify
reasons why a given individual might need to be rescheduied for
another day. Rescheduling was only necessary in three cases.
Loss
of
sleep the previous night was the reason
in
one case, and transient physi-
cal complaints in the other two. Participants next completed the Y-1
subscale of the STAI (Spielberger et
al.,
1983) along with
the
POMS
(McNair et al., 1992)in order to obtain measures
of
state anxiety (STAI),
tension
(POMS),
and overall mood
(POMS).
The computation
of
a total
mood score was achieved by adding the scores on the
POMS
subscales
that carry a negative valence (T+D+A+F+C),subtracting the one score
that carries a positive valence
(V),
and adding a constant of
100
to avoid
negative scores. The instructional set for completion of both the STAI
and
POMS
directed participants to respond in terms
of
“how you feel
right now at this moment.”
Once the questionnaires were completed, the participant entered the
sound chamber and assumed either a seated or supine position. The
breathing mask was positioned on the individual, and this was followed
by a 5-minute period of adaptation
so
that participants could become
accustomed to the testing environment. This period of acclimatization
was followed by 30 minutes of hypnosis, autogenic relaxation, or quiet
rest.
Following this 30-minute intervention, the mask was removed, and
the individual completed the STAI and POMSonce again with the same
instructions employed prior to the session. This was followed by a
debriefing session that was used to evaluate the individual’s general
reactions to the session.This included a question as towhether or not the
individual thought they had fallen asleep during the session. None of
the participants included in this analysis reported that they had fallen
asleep, and a review
of
the videotapes did not reveal bodymovements or
sounds that were suggestive of sleep. All participants were then pro-
vided with a copy of the STAI, POMS, and a stamped, self-addressed
envelope with the request that the questionnaires be completed
60
min-
utes after debriefing and mailed as soon thereafter as possible. The post-
debriefing questionnaires were received within 24 to 48 hours via first
class mail service or returned to the lab in person.
RESULTS
Descriptive statistics were computed for all of the dependent vari-
ables, and thiswas followedby a series of three-way analyses of variance
(ANOVAs)with repeated measures across the trials factor to test for sta-
tistical significance (Kirk,
1982).
An
a priori alpha level of
.05
was em-
ployed in this study, and a Fisher
LSD
post hoc was utilized to probe
for the location of mean differences where
a
significant
F
value was
observed.
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