ABSTRACT
The work comprises conditions that have loosely been tied together by the label "sensory deprivation". Changes in perceptual functioning were commented upon by Bexton, Heron, and Scott in their preliminary report on the effects of sensory deprivation. Hallucinations of extreme vividness, impairment of thought processes, sensory and perceptual changes, together with significant changes in the EEG, all testify to the widespread effect on central neural functions that is induced simply by limiting the normal variation of sensory stimulation. Some of the earliest observations of sensory deprivation phenomena confirm this expectation. The attitudes of the subjects to these phenomena were measured by questionnaire scales. In addition to such visual effects there were also a few reports of hallucinatory kinds of phenomena involving other senses. The chapter considers to experiments in which the powerful independent variables have been conceived and handled at the behavioural level.
