Psychologists use the term dissociation to denote largely unconscious processes by which normal relationships in thought, memory, attitudes or other psychological activities do not adhere to their established relationships and become separate or independent. It is also used in PDD to characterize the deliberate disengagement of attention by examinees from the testing situation. Such tactical redirection of attention is considered a mental countermeasure. Examinees who use this approach are hopeful that they may eliminate physiological responses by virtue of their mental distance from the test questions. Dissociation may be effective in test formats where examinees respond with the same answer to each question, such as with the Peak of Tension. In that format, the examinee needs only listen for the point when the examiner stops speaking and gives the rote answer. Dissociation is considered a more unlikely countermeasure for those formats that require both yes and no answers, where the order of the questions is not predictable to the examinee, or where examinees are required to use keywords from the test question in the answer. See Elad & Ben-Shakhar (1991); Kircher, Woltz, Bell & Bernhardt (2006).
