Extrasensory perception I

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Extrasensory perception I

• Christine Simmonds-Moore

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What is ESP?

• Extrasensory perception term coined by J.B.
  Rhine, encompassing-
• Precognition
• Clairvoyance
• Telepathy

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What is precognition?

• Direct awareness of events that will take place
  in the future
• prediction, premonition, foreknowledge in
  spontaneous cases
• Have occurred throughout history and in every
  culture
• The majority occur in dreams
• Often concern personal misfortunes or larger
  disasters
• Case studies of precognition
• What about retrocognition?

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What is clairvoyance?

• Clairvoyance is the direct psychic perception
• of information about the physical state of a
  sensorily
• shielded object, place or event by a
  percipient,
• when no living individual knows that
• information at the time of the clairvoyant
• perception
• - Tart and Targ, 1985

• Clairaudience is the paranormal perception of
  distant auditory events
• Examples of clairvoyance

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What is telepathy?

• Term was coined in 1882 by Myers
• fellow-feeling at a distance
• Thoughts, emotions, feelings
• Examples from Phantasms of the living and early
  SPR investigations
• Myers ruled out many experiences as due to the
  subliminal mind

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ESP is studied in three main ways

• Proof oriented research
• Does psi exist?
• Process oriented research
• How does it work?
• What are the correlates of psi?
• Phenomenology
• What is it like to have an experience?

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Spontaneous Experiences in the general population
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Types of SPE
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• One cannot exclude the possibility of two
  totally unrelated events coinciding by chance.
  Consequently, such incidents are not in
  themselves sufficient proof of the existence of
  telepathic and clairvoyant perceptions or dreams.
  Accounts of such occurrences will become truly
  significant only when telepathic and telesthetic
  phenomena are confirmed by repeated experiments
• - L. L. Vasiliev, 1965

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Early experimental research

• Clairvoyance
• 1888 Charles Richet undertook the first formal
  experiments with clairvoyance
• Ina Jephson of the Society for Psychical Research
  and card guessing
• Precognition
• Carringtons dream study

• Telepathy
• Warcollier
• Upton Sinclair mental radio
• Bruggmans and Wienburg
• Janets telepathic induction of hypnotic trance
• Gardner transatlantic telepathy
• Estabrooks
• Coover

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J.B. Rhines laboratory _at_ Duke University from
1927 1960s

• Considered psi to be possible in everyone
• Did not test special claimants
• Research focused mostly on students
• Undertook simple, easily controlled test
  procedures
• Employed statistics to evaluate the results of
  the studies

J.B and Louisa Rhine
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Zener Cards
How many hits or correct guesses compared to
what is expected by chance
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Statistics and ESP
Critical ratio (z score)
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Example of an online ESP test

• http//moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/paul/cgi-bin/zener.cg
  i

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Rhines results

• Many of Rhines participants did score
  significantly above chance
• The first series tested 24 students
• 207 hits in 800 trials (chance 160)
• Probability is less than one in a million of this
  happening by chance
• Two outstanding participants
• Adam Linzmayer
• Hubert Pearce

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The Pearce-Pratt series

• Sender and receiver were separated in different
  buildings
• Four series were undertaken
• Compared performance over different distances
• 100 yards
• 250 yards
• No difference re distance
• Overall there was a highly significant deviation
  from chance!
• Overall, Pearce scored 7.9 hits per 25 cards
• At 100 yards, on average Pearce scored 8.8 hits
  per 25 cards
• At 250 yards on average Pearce scored 6.7 hits
  per 25 cards
• Hansels critique

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Patterns in the data

• Psi missing
• Consistent missing
• Focusing
• displacement
• Decline and position effects
• The differential effect
• Variance effects

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Impact of the Rhine era

• Brought the study of paranormal experiences into
  a scientific and easily measurable context
• Treated sceptically by the scientific community
  in particular by psychologists for damaging the
  reputation of mainstream psychology!
• Many criticisms have been directed toward the
  research
• Invalid statistical analyses
• Uncontrolled sensory cues
• Recording errors
• Inadequate shuffling
• Optional stopping
• Suppression of null results
• Experimenter fraud
• Irwin (2004) suggests that these do not hold up
• Paved the way to modern research

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Types of research in parapsychology

• Forced choice
• The range of possible targets is known to the
  percipient
• E.g., the 5 standard ESP or Zener cards
• Can collect a lot of data relatively quickly
  lots of trials per session
• Simple to score
• Experiments are not ecologically valid

• Free response
• Range of possible targets is unknown to the
  percipient
• E.g., art prints, photographs, video clips, etc.
• Data collection takes a long time one trial per
  session
• Requires blind judging
• Experiments are more ecologically valid

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Remote viewing experiments

• Features of RV ESP
• Free response gt forced choice
• Consistency in performance among gifted
  participants
• Non verbal
• Not degraded by distance
• Not degraded by time
• Not degraded by use of a Faraday cage

• Targ and Puthoffs work at SRI
• Meta analysis of all SRI studies run between
  1973-1988
• Criticised by Marks and Kamman (1980)
• Mays work at SAIC
• Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
  (PEAR)remote viewing program
• Criticised by Hansen
• Utts and schmeidler both conclude there are
  non-chance effects in Remote Viewing studies

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Also see http//www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/practical/labe
xamples.html
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Dream studies

• A series of dream telepathy studies took place at
  Maimonides medical center in NYC
• Free response ESP methods
• 7 out of 15 formal studies showed positive
  results
• Recent work at University of Edinburgh
• Recent work at University of Northampton

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Belief and ESP

• Belief in ESP relates to the outcome of the study
• E.g., Schmeidler
• Many people have found the same pattern
• E.g., Palmer (1971) review of experiments run
  between 1947 1970 addressing sheep-goat effect
• Lawrence (1993)
• Lovitts experiment
• the sheep-goat effect reversed!

• The Experimenter effect
• The belief of the experimenter affects the study
  outcome
• E.g., Schiltz and Wiseman study

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Summary

• Scientists have tried to move paranormal
  experiences into the laboratory to observe
  whether ESP experiences are more than just
  coincidence
• Many above chance findings but other findings at
  chance
• Use of Meta-analysis
• Parapsychology attracts a lot of criticism,
  despite being very rigorous in terms of research
  methods and statistics
• Parapsychology continues develop and make the
  most of technological advances
• Virtual reality and telepathy, brain mapping and
  ESP, psychophysiology and ESP, etc.