Kevin
Hogan
For years I was completely certain that if people looked up and to the left they were remembering a visual image. If they were looking up and to their right they were constructing a future memory. It’s what I was taught and it’s what I believed to be true. The more carefully I watched people in various settings, the more I began to realize that it just didn’t seem right! But, so what? Who would care and why would it matter? I thought about it for a long time….Then it dawned on me: It was important to find out what was really happening with eye accessing cues in the brain because all across the country law enforcement officers, border patrol and even military personnel are being taught information that was never researched or tested. …and it turns out that we had eye accessing cues completely wrong.
Six months ago, at a hypnotherapy certification
training here in Minnesota we started researching eye accessing cues. After my
initial research, I became frustrated because what I had written in The
Psychology of Persuasion, about eye accessing cues was completely wrong. It
was the only section in the book I personally didn’t research.
My initial research this year showed the NLP eye
accessing explanation to be completely inaccurate. I handed the project over to
Monica Piechowski, CH. Monica is a Psychology student at the University of
Wisconsin. She proceeded to improve on my research design in many ways and ran
several additional research projects to learn about eye accessing cues, at our
NLP and hypnosis trainings here, and at the University of Wisconsin. She began
to accumulate data corroborating my findings. She too was frustrated because
everything she was learning was contrary to what she had been taught. She asked
Ron Stubbs, an instructor of hypnotherapy to do research independent from our
work. His results also corroborated our work.
What did we find out? There certainly are patterns
in eye movement, but they aren’t anything like what we were all taught over the
last 30 years. The specific project (one of the four) you are about to read
about was completely sponsored by the University of Wisconsin and therefore we
would like to present to you this report in almost-APA style for your
edification. Be forewarned: APA style is not breezy to read but this is almost
exactly how our research will appear in scientific journals later in the year.
We wanted you to be the first to see it! (We deleted appendixes A and B to
spare you all the questions we asked subjects but you can go to
www.kevinhogan.com for the entire lists of questions used in this research.)
Contributors:
Monica
M. Piechowski,, Ron Stubbs, and Kevin Hogan, UW-River Falls Faculty Sponsor,
Dr. Brad Caskey.
In the late 1970’s Richard Bandler
and John Grinder introduced an area titled Neuro-Linguistic Programming
(NLP). Though the term
Neuro-Linguistics was originally coined by Alfred Korzybski in his book Science
and Sanity, the study of its utilization (NLP) was not made popular until
much later. Neuro-Linguistic
Programming would come to be defined as an attitude of curiosity and desire to
learn involving a modeling methodology that presupposes that behavior has a
structure and that modeling allows us to effectively manage states of
mind. This technology helps individuals
to achieve results that they probably would not have achieved before.
Though many of the methods of NLP
have been developed from several areas of psychology, most have been streamlined
into a workable and translatable format usable by businesses, corporations,
politicians, and therapists. The
methods employed in NLP have come under the scrutiny of the psychological
community because of the quick nature of its utilization and whether or not NLP
has a significant long term success rate.
In this research we will be studying one area of NLP known as primary
eye accessing systems which are discussed at length in the book Frogs Into
Princes (1978). Over forty-four
studies have been done on eye accessing cues, however, few have been done by
individuals with an adequate background in NLP which significantly may have
impacted the results (Sharpley, 1987) because of training level in the
methodology employed. Though open for
speculation as to why few of the studies done have not utilized NLP
practitioners, the most likely reason is that of the availability of trained
individuals in the general population.
In a rebuttle of results by Beck and Beck (1984) which referenced a
study done by Thomason, Arbuckle, and Cady (1980), stated that there was a
significant discrepancy between the criterion and subjects observed eye
movements. This stated that further
research was necessary on testing the model to determine the nature of the
internal activity during the thought process.
Though internal processes are subjective in measure, one can theorize
that when an individual is asked questions relating to one sense, they will
access thoughts relating to that sense (ie. Think of a picture of the Mona
Lisa).
Research by Buckner, Meara, Reese, and Reese (1987) provided the primary design for this study with individuals conducting the interview to involve individuals trained by the Hypnosis Research and Training Center in the methodology to be employed. In order to avoid spatial discrepancies, researchers will switch location from left, center, and right of the interviewees at instructed points during the interview. This movement is to avoid any locking in of movement to one specific direction of eye contact by the interviewee or other possible emotional memory interference.
This research aims to study what, if
any, correlation there is in eye accessing cues to construct and remembered
events and primary representational systems (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). Though thought patterns are not intended to
be consistent over time because of the very nature of behavior, the correlation
between the eye movements and primary representational systems when asked questions
of sensory nature should be consistent.
This linking of directional shift in eye movement could provide
information necessary to develop future theories and modeling methodologies for
use in coaching, police work, and therapeutic arenas. The result of this study is hoped will either disprove current
theories of eye accessing cues, uphold those theories, or re-write the theories
with a more accurate model. We
hypothesize that memories and/or constructs of future event “memories” will be
more readily accessed by the individual looking in a specific direction that is
predictable in general human behavior.
This study was composed of adult
individuals from varying backgrounds and ages.
The reason for this selection is to step away from utilizing college
population samples and to provide a broad observational aspect to this theory
of eye accessing cues. Participants
will be randomly selected from more advanced level psychology courses at the
University of Wisconsin-River Falls.
Participants in the Hypnosis Research and Training center trials will be
assigned to either interview or researcher position based upon their previous
knowledge of NLP and the eye movement hypothesis. This was determined before the research by individual answers
when asked about their previous training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming on a
course application. Individuals who
responded with no prior experience in NLP were selected for the experimental
group.
For each research participant the researcher
received a copy of the interview form (See Appendix A) and an informed consent
form (See Appendix B) in a standard file folder. Questions on this form included references to each the visual,
auditory, and kinesthetic (tactile) sensory questions. As part of the design we included check
boxes corresponding with each direction of movement possible for a higher
degree of recording accuracy and to speed up the ability of the interviewers to
record movement.
Interviews for this experiment
utilized three locations. One being the
social psychology learning lab at UW-River falls (room 156, Centennial Science
Building), and the other two being classrooms utilized by the Hypnosis Research
and Training center at their Seattle and Minneapolis training.
Participants were invited
individually into the research room and asked to read and sign an informed
consent form. While participants signed
this form, the researcher is to note which hand the individual use to write in
order to determine possible hemispherical dominance in participants and record
this information on the demographics form in Appendix A. Participants were given random number
assignments in order to ensure anonymity and accuracy in recording of
demographic and interview results.
The researcher then took a seat at
the position center to the interviewee and followed instructions as listed in
Appendix A for the duration of the interview.
Following each interview participants were thanked for their time and
asked not to discuss the nature of the questions with other participants until
the study had been completed at the end of finals week in order to ensure no
expectation effect by future participants during the study.
The average participant involved in
this study was 36.6 years of age and had at least five years of college education. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 74
years. From the 27 participants in this
sample, only two were left-handed. In
reviewing their results and comparing these to that of the right-handed
individuals in the study we found no difference in results. Though the left-handed population sample was
not significant enough to run an analysis of difference test on, we predicted
ahead of time that right and left handedness was a possible variable for
results, but it showed otherwise in this population.
The results were recorded on
Appendix A for each interview in nine movements as detailed in the chart below
with the corresponding movements.
|
UL |
Upper
Left |
|
LC |
Left
Center |
|
LL |
Lower
Left |
|
C |
Center
Middle |
|
CU |
Center
Up |
|
CL |
Center
Lower |
|
UR |
Upper
Right |
|
RC |
Right
Center |
|
LR |
Lower
Right |
After interviews were complete,
answers from the form in Appendix A were recorded on a form and broken down
into the intended question (ie. Visual Created/Remembered, Auditory
Created/Remembered, Kinesthetic Created/Remembered) Appendix C charts the count
of movements recorded. For each eye
movement the total number of responses were recorded. Then the movement for left, right, and center were added for each
sensory modality studied followed by the up, center, down for each
modality. The results of this can be
broken down several ways. The data for
the results of this study indicate no significant movement other than to the
center middle for each response. When
the results were interpreted with the directional movements, all but the visual
and kinesthetic created modalities exhibited a tendency to remain in the
center. For the visual and kinesthetic
created, the movement with this interpretation was to the right center. The auditory created was significantly close
to the right center movement, however, this scored just below the level needed
to get a right center recording.
During the design phase of this research, we took the best of the available research projects on this subject and extracted what worked within the study and utilized that within this one. Questions for this study were combined from several sources and created using sensory specific wording to either create or remember an image, sound, or feeling/tactile stimulation.
After reviewing design, the only flaw we could
determine was in how results were recorded.
With multiple individuals recording data, there should have been mixed
results. Instead, we were able to find
a consistent result from all trials when that variable was factored. Also, if this research would be conducted
again in the future, we would add a variable of video taped recording of the
interviews in order to avoid any possible mixed interpretation of eye
movements. If this were to be
completed, individuals selected for the research would need to involve
individuals who have experience on camera because of anxiety associated with
recording equipment. Also, in utilizing
the social psychology lab, there were several individuals who were concerned
that they were being video taped even though they were not because fixed
recording equipment was located within the room. In the Minneapolis trial, not having individual rooms for the
interviews may have provided for some distractions within the experimental room
where individuals could possibly have had their concentration on the
interviewer disrupted thus changing their eye movement. Again, when this factor was considered,
there was no change in recorded results.
In addition to how the interviews
were conducted, we also would like to increase the number of interviews and
participants. The time required in
order to complete each interview and remain consistent with recordings did not
allow for this to take place in this study.
Even with the number of participants we did have, there should have been
a clear pattern in the results established.
We also considered changing the questions. In studying the results from a similar study completed at the
Hypnosis Research and Training Center’s NLP practitioner course several months
before this study was done, we found the same results with an entirely
different yet similar basal construct set of questions.
We also considered for future
research on this subject with the researcher in the room with the subject that
the center as a default position. If
the researcher is in the room and is being asked a question then you focus on
their face, search for access then return to their face to give their
answer. This trial variable might be
utilized in a future trial of this research for the sake of testing whether the
physical contact with the interviewer played a role in our results. The construct difference would be
video-recording equipment placed to the center of the volunteer with a monitor
located in a room adjacent to the volunteer with a speaker and microphone to
record the results of the interview.
With the similarity in results in
our study and the overwhelming center results, we decided not to run
correlational or other statistical measures simply because the numbers speak
for themselves as they currently are.
The closeness in recorded data for the Auditory created data suggests
that there needs to be additional participants for the study in order to show
which movement is more significant for the right or center directional movement. There is a significant showing that the
centered center movement has a relationship with the remembered events while
the created events tend to move from the center to the right. With additional future trials of this study,
this may prove to be something of value in reference to the theories
involved. When comparing this portion
of the results to the charts included within the book Frogs Into Princes,
this contradicts the charts there which indicate that the created memories are
organized on the left side and the remembered events are located on the right
side.
This research aimed to determine
whether or not there was adequate support for the eye movement hypothesis in
NLP. As our results show and other
studies relating to this hypothesis have shown, there is not the support
available uphold the theory. We suggest
that there might be a connection between remembered versus created movement to
one side, however, the study will need to be replicated under several
additional conditions to determine whether or not there is support for that
idea. In closing, the researchers
together would like to state that our results speak for themselves, we are
willing to provide the questions and structural information for individuals to
replicate this study in its entirety and show that there is a relationship
between eye movement and sensory representational thought access.
Bandler, R. & Grinder, J. (1979), Frogs Into
Princes; Neuro Linguistic Programming, Moab, Utah: Real People Press.
Beck, C.E., & Beck E.A., “Test of the
Eye-Movement Hypothesis of Neurolinguistic Programming: A Rebuttal of
Conclusions” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1984, Vol. 58, p 175-176
Buckner, M., Meara, N., Reese, E.J, & Reese
M. “Eye Movement as an Indicator of Sensory
Components in Thought” Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1987, Volume
34, No. 3, p. 283-287
Dixon P.N, Parr, G.D, Yarbrough D.,
& Rathael, M., “Neurolinguistic Programming as a Persuasive Communication
Technique” The Journal of Social Psychology, 1986, 126(4), 545-550.
Grinder J., & Bandler R.,(1981)
Trance-formations; Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis,
Moab, Utah: Real People Press.
Hogan, K., (1996), The Psychology of Persuasion;
How to Persuade Others to Your Way of Thinking, Grenta, Louisiana: Pelican
Publishing Company, Inc.
Horton, William D. (1998), Primary Objective;
Neuro-Linguistic Psychology and Guerrilla Warfare, Chicago, Illinois:
Eschaton Productions Inc.
Korzybski, Science and Sanity,
Sharpley C.F. “Research Findings on
Neurolinguistic Programming: Nonsupportive Data or an Untestable Theory” Journal
of Counseling Psychology, 1987 Vol. 34, No. 1, 103-107
Thomason,
T.C., Arbuckle, T., & Cady, D. “Test of the Eye Movement Hypothesis of
Neurolinguistic Programming.” Perceptual
and Motor Skills, 1980, Vol. 51, p. 230.
Appendix C
|
Visual Created |
UL |
LC |
LL |
C |
CU |
CL |
UR |
RC |
LR |
|
|
42 |
45 |
39 |
141 |
20 |
23 |
61 |
85 |
57 |
|
Visual Created |
Left |
Center |
Right |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
126 |
184 |
203 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Visual Created |
Up |
Center |
Lower |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
123 |
271 |
119 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Auditory Created |
UL |
LC |
LL |
C |
CU |
CL |
UR |
RC |
LR |
|
|
56 |
41 |
33 |
145 |
24 |
22 |
60 |
49 |
68 |
|
Auditory Created |
Left |
Center |
Right |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
130 |
191 |
177 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Auditory Created |
Up |
Center |
Lower |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
140 |
235 |
123 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kinesthetic Created |
UL |
LC |
LL |
C |
CU |
CL |
UR |
RC |
LR |
|
|
38 |
48 |
40 |
141 |
25 |
22 |
43 |
82 |
69 |
|
Kinesthetic Created |
Left |
Center |
Right |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
126 |
188 |
194 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kinesthetic Created |
Up |
Center |
Lower |
|
|