The Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS), as adapted and validated in Spanish by Robles et al. (2010), is a psychometric tool designed to assess an individual's propensity for immersive experiences, emotional resonance with sensory stimuli, and susceptibility to altered states of consciousness, such as daydreaming, mystical episodes, or synesthetic perceptions; originally developed by Tellegen and Atkinson (1974), the scale comprises 34 binary items (true/false) that evaluate the subject’s capacity to become deeply engaged in sensory, imaginative, or emotional experiences, effectively losing awareness of the self and surroundings; key categories include emotional responses to poetic language, visual and auditory absorption, vivid imagery, synesthetic associations, and mystical or paranormal experiences; high scores on the TAS have been correlated with hypnotizability, openness to experience, and fantasy proneness, suggesting that absorption functions as a personality trait that mediates how individuals respond to suggestion, engage with aesthetics, or relive autobiographical memories; in clinical settings, the TAS aids in evaluating patients’ suitability for hypnotherapy and understanding the imaginative components of psychological disorders or trauma; although it shares overlap with hypnotic suggestibility, the TAS is distinguished by its focus on spontaneous, immersive involvement, rather than externally induced trance states; it thus serves as a valuable diagnostic and therapeutic complement in psychological assessment, especially in contexts that require insight into a person’s inner experiential landscape and their capacity for symbolic transformation.
