I met Lozanov at a conference on sleep and psychosomatic
medicine in Rome.
He reported his initial experiments with learning under
"suggestopedia" which he distinctly differentiated from hypnosis
per se. The results claimed were beyond those generally found in
the literature on learning.
He had a grant under UNESCO. So, when he visited the US several years later, I invited him to speak at the Albany Medical College and arranged for his talk at the State University of New York, Albany. While visiting he stayed at my house and we had more than one talk. He did produce a movie showing an operation of surgical repair of a hernia without anesthesia with him using suggestion/hypnosis on the patient.
I believe sufficient time has passed to state that he could not provide me with any evidence that Baroque or any other music used in his method was essential to the results he claimed. The general impression I had, and still do, is that he put together varied things to establish a "psychological climate" that could help certain people learn faster. In fact, I took him to a music store in Albany where he purchased various scores to use with his method.
In the middle '70s I spent a month in Bulagria visiting varied laboratories, including the Research Institute of Suggestology, Budapest Str. 9, Sofia as well as The Institute for Foreign Students, Asen Velchev Str. 41, 1111 Sofia. In short, I learned nothing more about the studies supporting the results for learning acceleration by suggestopaedia. I did sit through a suggestopaedic learning session with adult students who seemed to like the method.
The latter institute used a learning laboratory with Tanberg tape machines and an "immersion" approach to language learning. They were aware of Lozanov's method but didn't have much faith /interest in it. I also visited a public school reported to be using suggestopeadia where I witnessed some amazing language performances by elementary level students.
It is impossible to summarize the entire visit here. Interested peoiple can consult the report, that covers other laboratories also, archived at the American Psychological Association: Aarons, L. (1976). Observations on psychological research in Bulgaria. (Ms. No.1222, pp. 1-29), JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 6.
Later, and I don't have the reference at hand, the US Navy ran a
study of the Lozanov method and did not find evidence for
accelerated learning. Lozanov did use, as part of his overall
method, what is called marginal stimulation.
The material to be learned is not central to one's attention --
but relevant to one's goals in learning. In a way, I have used a
kind of marginal stimulation that speeded up the learning of
Russian words, see: Aarons, L. (1990). The bilingual-dichotic
method for learning a foreign-language vocabulary. Applied
Cognitive Psychology, 4, 383-392. The method has been used to speed
up learning in Spanish and Japanese.
The last I heard from Lozanov he was working at the University of Sofia. He sent me an announcement for a conference on suggestopaedia to be held in Vienna.
I hope the above information is useful to interested members of the list.
Lou Aarons, PhD
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