Suggestions can cause some individuals to miss or disregard existing visual stimuli, but can they infuse sensory input with nonexistent information? Although several prominent theories of hypnotic suggestion propose that mental imagery can change our perceptual experience, data to support this stance remain sparse. The present study addressed this lacuna, showing how suggesting the presence of physically absent, yet critical, visual information transforms an otherwise difficult task into an easy one. Here, we show how adult participants who are highly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion successfully hallucinated visual occluders on top of moving objects. Our findings support the idea that, at least in some people, suggestions can add perceptual information to sensory input. This observation adds meaningful weight to theoretical, clinical, and applied aspects of the brain and psychological sciences.

中文翻译：

---

困难变简单：建议使具有挑战性的视觉任务变得简单

建议可能会导致一些人错过或忽视现有的视觉刺激，但他们能否将不存在的信息注入感官输入中？尽管一些著名的催眠暗示理论提出心理意象可以改变我们的知觉体验，但支持这种立场的数据仍然很少。目前的研究解决了这一缺陷，展示了如何暗示物理上不存在但关键的视觉信息的存在将原本困难的任务变成了简单的任务。在这里，我们展示了极易受到催眠暗示影响的成年参与者如何成功地在移动物体上产生视觉遮挡物。我们的发现支持这样一种观点，即至少在某些人中，建议可以为感官输入添加感知信息。这一观察结果为理论、临床、