Coming up: conference on “Psychic Phenomena and Consciousness”

Here’s the poster for the forthcoming SPR conference, which is in Newcastle (UK) 21-23 September. There will be two papers reporting latest KPU work (precognition research using the ganzfeld method, and studies replicating Walach and von Lucadou’s Correlation Matrix Method). Also, there will be invited talks on consciousness from Bernardo Kastrup and Rupert Sheldrake. It’s a relatively inexpensive conference to attend, especially if you are a student. But don’t delay – registration closes 14th Sept! Link to registration, and more programme info on this page.

Inaugural lecture!

I don’t think I’ve ever given a lecture in front of family and friends as well as academic colleagues and the general public. So it is with more nerves than usual that I announce my inaugural Professorial lecture in Edinburgh on 25th April. It’s open to the public – I hope if you’re in the area you can come along. Crichton St is on the approach to George Square, home of the KPU and the Psychology department (currently, the neighbourhood is swamped with roadworks so abandon hope of parking nearby.)

Please see the poster below for further details. Here’s an earlier blog I wrote about becoming Edinburgh’s second Koestler Professor.

 

Amplified states of consciousness: Bial Symposium preview

Next week the 12th Bial Foundation Symposium takes place in Oporto, on the theme of Enhancing the Mind. The Symposium has three sessions of invited speakers. The first session is on the topic of Cognitive Enhancement, and has presentations from Alexander Sack, Ajan Chatterjee, Jean-Noel Missa, and Torkel Klingberg. The session is chaired by Rainer Goebel. The third session, chaired by Rui Costa, is themed around Collective Intelligence, and has presentations from Gonzalo de Polavieja, Rui Oliveira, Jose Carmena, and Christopher Chabris. Below I provide a link for those seeking further information on speakers and content for these two sessions. The second session, chaired by yours truly,  has close links to parapsychology and is entitled:  Amplified States of Consciousness. Here follows a wee preview of our session:

Our first speaker is Professor Etzel Cardeña, Thorsen Professor of Psychology at Lund University. He will be speaking on Derangement of the senses or alternate epistemological pathways? Research on alterations of consciousness and human potentials. Here is his abstract, courtesy of the Syposium program and book of abstracts (link below):

“Our ordinary, waking state of consciousness, is typically considered by contemporary science as normative and the purveyor of the best apprehension of “reality”. This has been the case despite its various perceptual and cognitive limitations – partly explainable by evolutionary pressures – and personal and cultural biases and automatisms. In contrast, various philosophical traditions in both the West and the East, as well as a psychological school traceable to William James, F. W. H. Myers, and others, have deemed the ordinary state as narrow and potentially misleading, and have described “enhanced” states of consciousness that may provide insights into the nature of mind and its relation to reality.

This presentation will first describe research findings on some of the constraints of the ordinary state. Next, it will discuss the concept of “higher”, “amplified”, or “extended” consciousness states or traits, because it is far from obvious in what ways a particular state may be thought of as “enhanced”. Various solutions can be offered, depending on what we prioritize: an improvement of common processes or abilities; greater mental control or focus, or performance at a task; access to usually implicit aspects of the mind/brain; new noetic perspectives on the self and/or reality; more comprehensive and unselfish ethical/ecological perspectives; or a combination of some or all of the above.

This presentation will then discuss research on how spontaneous or purposefully induced (e.g., through hypnosis, meditation, sensory restriction techniques, rituals) anomalous experiences and alterations of consciousness can produce specific enhancement of abilities, including decreased perceptual and cognitive automaticity; enhanced physiological control; recovery from different ailments; and positive changes in emotions, sense of meaning, and relationships with other beings and the environment. The final section will review supportive research evidence for one of the most daring claims about alternate states of consciousness: that they may give access to information not bound by common sense notions of time, space, and selfhood (i. e., psi phenomena).”

Our second speaker is Professor Jordi Riba, who is Head of the Human Neuropsychopharmacology Research Group at Hospital Sant Pau in Spain. He will be speaking on Ayahuasca as a mind-expanding tool: Neuroscience and therapeutic potential. The abstract follows:

“Ayahuasca is an Amazonian plant tea combining biologically active beta-carboline alkaloids with the psychedelic serotonin-2A agonist N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Studies by our group have shown that when administered to humans, ayahuasca induces a transient modified state of consciousness characterized by enhanced introspection, dream-like visions and recollection of emotionally-laden personal memories. In my presentation I will review the neuroscience of ayahuas- ca, with special emphasis on its neurophysiological effects and its impact on brain dynamics. I will also present our most recent neuroimaging results showing sustained neurometabolic and function- al connectivity changes once the acute effects have disappeared. These neural changes correlate with enhanced metacognitive capacities that are typically impaired in many psychiatric disorders. I will discuss how boosting these capacities with ayahuasca could potentially help modify pathological patterns of thought and behaviour, such as those observed in depression and addiction. To conclude, I’ll present our ongoing studies in patients and will discuss new potential applications for this remarkable psychoactive preparation.”

Third, we have Associate Professor Yulia Ustinova from the Department of General History, Ben-Gurion University, Israel. She will be speaking on Enhancing the Mind in Ancient Greece. Her abstract follows:

“Both the ancient Greek term epipnoia and the Latin inspiratio, from which the English word ‘inspiration’ derives, convey the idea of breath, an airy invisible flow, entering a person from the outside, temporarily elevating him or her to an extraordinary level – of creativity, vision, knowledge, physical force or courage. In my presentation, I’ll discuss inspiration of famous Greek philosophers, traditional sages and prophetic priests, and the methods employed to attain this state.

In Plato’s opinion, prolonged investigation is conductive to the ultimate knowledge, which bursts out as a revelation. True knowledge requires deliberation, but they are separated by a gap, and their nature is different. This position is reminiscent of the accounts of modern thinkers and scientists who arrived at their ideas as a result of illumination: this spark of truth is possible only after a prolonged contemplation of a problem, culminating in the realisation of the solution, to be safe- guarded later by rational scrutiny.

Plato also refers to Socrates’ trance-like meditations, out-of-body experiences and feeling of divine intrusion. Philosophising of some Plato’s predecessors, such as Pythagoras and Parmenides, probably included meditation, sensory deprivation, and complex preparations leading to illumination, subsequently re-considered my means of rational judgement.

These practices are reminiscent of the tradition of self-cultivation and manipulation of consciousness of quasi-historical Archaic Greek sages, who ‘acquired their knowledge of the divine by means of ecstatic and initiatory wisdom,’ as Plutarch says. In many Greek oracular sanctuaries, a common prerequisite was a solitary way of life. Immediately preceding oracle-giving, the prophetic person performed a set of ritual actions, often including sensory deprivation, in order to attain the state of revelation construed as divine possession.

Seers, initiates and enlightened thinkers see and hear what others do not. These individuals perceive their inside and outside world in a manner different from the usual, which in Greece was construed as divine inspiration. When the Greeks witnessed a state of mind that was beyond comprehension in terms of regular experiences, they thought of engodedness – enthousiasmos in Greek: such phenomena were ascribed either to pure divine intervention or to an interaction of human and divine forces.

In order to attain this state, philosophers used methods comparable with the techniques applied in vision quest by traditional sages and in oracular practices. Thus, rational thinkers and spiritual seekers, in the past and nowadays, report some congruent experiences that they regard as salient – and this is a subject to be explored by experts on the brain alongside historians.”

Finally, the keynote speaker for our session is Professor Antoine Lutz, of the Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre. He will speak on Regulation of attention and emotions by meditation: Neurophysiological basis and implications for mental and physical health. His abstract follows:

“Mindfulness-based therapy has become an increasingly popular treatment to reduce stress, increase well-being and prevent relapse in depression. A key component of these therapies includes mindfulness practice that intends to train attention to detect and regulate afflictive cognitive and emotional patterns. Despite its clinical efficacy, little remains known about its cognitive and neurophysiological means of action pf meditation. In this presentation, we will first review the key cognitive mechanisms of mindfulness meditation. Then we will show how mindfulness meditation impacts the training and plasticity of emotion regulation and cognitive control as measured by neuroimaging paradigms from cognitive, and affective neuroscience (EEG, fMRI). In a last part, we will illustrate how the practice of mindfulness meditation can also influence bodily processes important for health, including the physiology and genetic expressions of stress and inflammation.”

I hope you can make it to the Bial Symposium but, if not, you can see the full symposium program and book of abstracts here.

About the Bial Foundation. The Bial Foundation is very important for the field of parapsychology. Dr Luis Portela (right), chairman of Bial (Portugal’s largest pharmaceutical group), has a strong interest in parapsychology. In 1994 he set up the Bial Foundation whose mission is ‘to foster the scientific study of the human being from both the physical and spiritual perspectives’. In practice, the Bial Foundation funds ‘largely unexplored’ areas of psychophysiology, and parapsychology, and is currently parapsychology’s most important funder.

To date the BIAL Foundation has supported 610 projects, about 1350 researchers, with research groups in 25 countries.

In addition to its scholarship scheme, the Bial Foundation organises bi-annual themed symposia that include keynote addresses from international experts in neuroscience, parapsychology, and psychophysiology, as well as presentations and poster sessions from Bial Fellows. Professor Etzel Cardeña and I are the two parapsychologists on the symposium organising committee.  You can see the published proceedings of the first 11 Symposia here.

Ten years of online parapsychology

In September 2008 I launched the KPU’s online parapsychology course. It continues to run twice per year (beginning April and September), and is designed to give a balanced introduction to the field of parapsychology. It does this partly through providing exclusive interviews both with expert academics who are skeptical of paranormal claims, such as Professor Jim Alcock, Professor Chris French, and Professor Richard Wiseman, as well as interviews with expert researchers who are generally regarded as psi proponents, including Professor Jessica Utts, Professor Stephen Braude, and Dr Dean Radin. Also it provides peer reviewed journal articles to reflect areas of debate in the field, along with discussion boards where students can explore each week’s topic with each other and with the course leader (me!), and MCQ quizzes where students can test their knowledge.

I’m delighted that the course is still going strong, and to mark the occasion I plan to refresh it later this year with new and updated expert interviews and readings. The April 2018 course is about to launch so if you’d like to find out more and to register then please visit the course webpages and FAQs on the KPU webpages here. Or go straight here to register for the April course.

 

How to plan falsifiable confirmatory research

 

Karl Popper used the black swan as a simple example of how to falsify the hypothesis that all swans are white. But how do psychologists falsify hypotheses about more complex human abilities and behaviour? Jim Kennedy has just posted online our new paper on how to plan falsifiable confirmatory research. The ability to obtain evidence that a hypothesis is true or false is a basic goal of science. However, most research has been designed to obtain evidence that a hypothesis is true without the design features needed to obtain evidence that the hypothesis is false. Many researchers appear to be unfamiliar with the methods that can provide evidence that a hypothesis is false. Research that can provide evidence that a hypothesis is true but cannot provide evidence that the hypothesis is false is biased science.

Even with the recent extensive discussions of methodological biases in psychological research, most of the proposed solutions would allow some forms of deficient methodological practices to continue. Our observation is that the ongoing debates about statistical methods for replication studies and about the value of retrospective meta-analysis show that methodological opinions are currently heading in many different directions and not converging to a consensus. The debates between advocates for the new statistics and advocates for hypothesis tests are a clear example.

We believe that falsifiable research provides a conceptual framework for resolving these debates and implementing optimal research methods. Although we have not found existing articles that provide useful discussions of the rationale and practical methods for implementing falsifiable research, we were unable to get our ideas published in either of two psychology journals. One editor said the ideas are not sufficiently novel to be published. We believe that the present paper provides valuable guidelines that are needed in psychological research—whether or not the various ideas in the paper are considered novel. The Abstract follows, and if you would like to read the full paper, the link is at the end.

Abstract

Psychologists generally recognize falsifiable research as a basic goal of science. However, the methods for conducting falsifiable research with classical statistics and related methods for planning optimal Bayesian analyses have not yet been recognized and implemented by psychological researchers. The first step for falsifiable research is selection of a minimum effect size of interest such that a smaller effect would be too small to be of interest or would be evidence the hypothesis is false. If a minimum effect of interest is not specified explicitly, the effect size that just meets the criterion for acceptable evidence will implicitly function as a minimum effect of interest (e.g., the effect size that gives p = .05 or Bayes factor = 3). For confirmatory research, researchers should know what effect size is functioning as the minimum effect of interest. The second step is to determine the sample size that has power of at least .95 for the minimum effect of interest. Failure to obtain a significant result with power of .95 is evidence that the predicted effect specified in the power analysis is false for the conditions of the study. Such a failure can be considered as rejecting the alternative hypothesis at the .05 level using logic analogous to rejecting the null hypothesis. Evaluating the operating characteristics or power curve for a planned analysis reveals the effect sizes that can be reliably detected in a study and is needed for Bayesian methods as well as for classical methods. Specifying the effect sizes that can be reliably detected is as important as specifying the subject population. The third step is to publicly preregister the study with specific numerical inference criteria for evidence that the effect does not occur in addition to the usual criteria for evidence that the effect does occur. Studies with lower power may be conducted but the effect size with power of .95 is the falsifiable effect size for a study. Recent large studies have had adequate sample sizes for these methods. The relationships between these methods and meta-analyses, the “new statistics,” and common practices for power analysis are discussed. Falsifiable research provides a conceptual framework for resolving many debates about methodology for confirmatory research.

A PDF of the full paper is here.

‘Work with a fraudulent PK metal-bending subject’

Many of you will have heard about ‘Project Alpha’, which was the brainchild of James Randi (pictured). In the late 1970s the aviation pioneer James McDonnell granted $500,000 to the University of Washington to set up a parapsychology laboratory. The physicist Peter Phillips took up directorship of the new lab and, perhaps unwisely as he had no expertise in conjuring, expressed an interest in testing macro-PK claimants (that is, people who claim to be able to influence physical objects through mind alone).

Subsequently two young men contacted Phillips claiming such abilities and proceeded to demonstrate various feats such as bending metal without apparently using physical force, though their skills seemed to become elusive when attempts were made to capture them on film. In reality, the two claimants were magicians called Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards who had been recruited by Randi and planted in the lab. Events came to a head in August 1981, at the Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association. Together with a colleague, Mark Shafer, Phillips submitted a brief report for presentation at the meeting that indicated they were personally convinced that the psychokinetic feats were genuine rather than faked. Other parapsychologists at the meeting were much more skeptical and Randi (who also attended the conference) pointed out possible opportunities for fraud. Shaken, Phillips and Shafer retracted their brief and re-issued it with caveats. (You can read more about this episode in my book Parapsychology: A Beginner’s Guide.)

As a consequence, parapsychologists became more cautious about testing so-called ‘special claimants’, and in 1987 Edinburgh University’s recently appointed Koestler Professor, Robert Morris, published guidelines for minimizing deception by psychic claimants (a nice subject for a separate blog, watch this space!).

Project Alpha is quite famous in parapsychology. Less well-known is that prior to the arrival of Bob Morris in Edinburgh, his predecessor Dr John Beloff also had an interesting experience with a fraudulent PK subject. John (pictured) was supervising two parapsychology PhD students at that time (1983): Julie Milton and Deborah Delanoy. Delanoy subsequently wrote the whole episode up, for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, and I’ve based this blog on her account (link at the end of this piece).

In 1983 Beloff was contacted by a 17-year old pupil at an Edinburgh school, named ‘Tim’ (pseudonym). Tim claimed to have developed metal-bending abilities as a child, and he went on to produce several bent objects for Beloff, Milton and Delanoy, though never under direct observation. The researchers contacted James Randi for advice on controls against fraud, and over an 18-month period the Edinburgh researchers conducted about 60 hours of tests with Tim. A video camera was used and objects were bent by Tim but never while being filmed. Tim claimed to have paranormally bent a piece of metal within a plexiglass puzzle cube in front of his friends. However he was reluctant to provide the names of these alleged witnesses. The researchers sent the cube to Randi, who observed it had been tampered with. Tim also claimed to have noticed that he could cause objects to spontaneously ignite when he was stressed or angry, and Milton and Delanoy attempted to test and film this. After much palaver, Tim did set some cotton wool balls alight, but again not within view of the camera. The parapsychologist Dr Julian Isaacs visited the research group with his piezoelectric crystal PK machine that could produce musical notes. The machine included various protections against physical influences such as static electricity and mains fluctuations. Tim did produce some notes with this machine, but not under sufficiently well-controlled conditions to persuade the researchers that he was using psychokinetic abilities to affect the machine.

Not surprisingly, despite finding Tim’s demeanor to be apparently quite genuine and convincing (‘one should never underestimate the consummate acting skills which one’s subjects may possess’), Delanoy and colleagues clearly doubted his claimed paranormal abilities. Eventually, through employing a secret camera and leaving Tim believing he was unobserved and with some metal objects to bend, Delanoy (pictured) caught him using obvious physical force to bend the metal. Delanoy then showed the film to Tim, and he claimed this was the first time he had attempted to cheat.

A few months later Delanoy wrote an account of the investigations with Tim, and sent it to him for comment. Finally he ‘fessed up that he had been studying and practising magic since 1977 and was a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. All of his supposedly paranormal feats had been faked. He said he’d wanted to see if a magician could successfully pose as a psychic in a laboratory, and he’d read an article about Julian Isaac’s PK machine and wanted to see whether he could influence it through normal means (creating static charges with the help of his fluffy sweater).

It’s to the Edinburgh researchers’ credit that, rather than burying this episode, they published an open account so that others could learn from it. I’m grateful that, in the same spirit, the Society for Psychical Research gave me permission to provide a link to Delanoy’s full (1987) article on the KPU’s Archive of Research Publications.

References:

Delanoy, D. L. (1987). Work with a fraudulent PK metal-bending subject. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 54, 247-256.

Morris, R.L. (1986).  Minimizing subject fraud in parapsychology laboratories. European Journal of Parapsychology, 6, 137-149.

Precognition: From Life to Lab

This weekend, I hope to visit Oslo for the first time, as an invited speaker for a conference to celebrate the centenary of the Norsk Parapsykologisk Selskap (I think that roughly translates as Norwegian Parapsychological Society.) Other speakers include Dr Dean Radin from the USA, Prof Etzel Cardena & Prof Adrian Parker from Sweden, Dr Walter von Lucadou from Germany, Prof Erlendur Haraldsson from Iceland, and also from the UK Prof Chris Roe.

The conference was organised by Jon Mannsåker (pictured), and has 9 presentations in English and three in Norwegian. Jon also edits the journal Parapsykologiske Notiser, and all speakers were asked to provide brief written versions of their talks to be translated into Norwegian for the August 2017 issue. Jon asked me to speak on the topic of precognition, and my title is Precognition: From Life to Lab.

For more information about the Norwegian Parapsykologisk Selskap Centenary conference, including programme, speaker bios and abstracts, click here.

In case you may be interested, here is the written version of my presentation,  for publication in Parapsykologiske Notiser.

Precognition: From Life to Lab
Caroline Watt, Koestler Parapsychology Unit, University of Edinburgh

Precognition is the apparent ability to predict unexpected future events, and precognitive dreams are among the most commonly reported seemingly paranormal experiences (Gurney, Myers & Podmore, 1886; Green, 1960; Moore, 2005; Rhine, 1954; van de Castle, 1977). Typically, in a precognitive experience, a person has some kind of impression, and later that is followed by an event that seems to confirm or match the earlier impression. For example, you dream about your brother being injured, and a few days later he crashes his car and is taken to hospital. We will take three different approaches to look at these experiences.

Phenomenology

First, we consider research into the phenomenology or characteristics of seemingly precognitive experiences in daily life. Here, it seems that the method of enquiry may influence what is found, and it’s important to distinguish between retrospective and prospective precognitive experiences. Retrospective experiences are typically reported after the confirming event has occurred – for instance, it is only after a confirming event happens that you realise that your earlier dream was seemingly precognitive. Case collections and survey research contain mostly this kind of precognitive experience. Researchers such as L.E. Rhine (1954; pictured) and Ian Stevenson (1960; pictured) have suggested on the basis of case collections and surveys that precognitive dreams are typically vivid and intense experiences often concerning negative events such as illness, injury or war.

For example, Stevenson recounts a precognition of the sinking of the Titanic. A New York woman had a vivid dream on the night of the sinking, so striking that she woke her husband to tell him about it: “I just saw mother in a crowded lifeboat rocking in the ocean swell” (Stevenson, 1960, p 157). The woman didn’t know her mother was on the ship. Her mother had boarded at Southampton, and had intended to surprise her daughter. Fortunately, she had indeed been saved by a lifeboat and eventually made it safely to New York.

Alternatively, prospective precognitive experiences can be collected through postal studies, diary studies, and dream registries. Here, people make daily recordings of their dreams before any confirming events have occurred. Later, if a confirming event occurs, they record a description of that.

Interestingly, researchers such as Friederike Schriever (1987; pictured) and Watt et al. (2015) have found that using this method seemingly precognitive dreams are not more vivid than regular dreams, and often concern mundane life events. This observation about how different dream collection methods obtain different findings has been independently confirmed by researchers studying the psychology of regular (rather than precognitive) dreams (Schredl & Doll, 1998). Perhaps because vivid dreams are more memorable than dreams about mundane events, case collections may misrepresent the frequency with which this type of vivid precognitive experience occurs (Watt et al., 2015).

Psychological factors

Real life precognitive dream experiences are quite common, however it is possible that many of these experiences may be attributable to normal rather than paranormal factors. So it is worth considering research into the kinds of psychological factors that may inflate the likelihood of people experiencing seemingly precognitive dreams in real life. Studies suggest that a propensity to detect correspondences is associated with a greater frequency of precognitive dream experiences (Watt, et al., 2014). This might be because more creative people are more psychic, or it might be that people who believe in the paranormal are more motivated to see a match between a dream and later events, so allow for more ‘fuzzy’ matches to count as precognitive. Also, our work shows that dreams that are confirmed by later events are much more memorable than dreams that are not confirmed by later events (Watt et al., 2014). This means that we more easily forget dreams that are not confirmed. Most people dream several times each night, even though they may forget most of their dreams if they are not used to keeping a dream diary.

Challenges of real world research

So, real life precognitive experiences can be striking and memorable, but it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about whether these are truly paranormal events. Another challenge that researchers face is that they cannot easily estimate the likelihood of a chance coincidence between a dream and later events, especially if we allow some fuzziness over what counts as a match. Also, people may not even be aware that their behaviour has been influenced by precognition, so cases of this type may be unreported. Let’s look at one notable observational study that did attempt to quantify the effects of unconscious precognition on people’s behaviour.

In the 1950s, W. E. Cox attempted to observe if there was any dip in passenger numbers on the days that a train was involved in an accident, compared to passenger numbers the same journey on preceding days and weeks. Cox (1956) did indeed find a tendency for passenger numbers to be lower on trains that crashed – something Cox attributed to ‘subliminal precognition’, though in fact some of the passengers may have dreamt about the impending doom and consciously decided to avoid the journey. However it’s difficult to be sure that the dropped passenger numbers were due to conscious or unconscious precognition. For instance, another external factor such as bad weather might have both deterred passengers from travelling as well as contributing to a train wreck.

Controlled laboratory studies

For these reasons, researchers who want to evaluate the precognition hypothesis scientifically have typically moved to the laboratory setting. In laboratory studies, researchers can eliminate or control for many normal factors that may ‘contaminate’ real life precognition experiences, including psychological factors and chance coincidence. They can also quantify the outcome of the studies which makes it easier to compare the results of different studies using similar methods.

In the final section of the talk, we consider this controlled laboratory research. First, we look at the method used to conduct experiments on dream precognition. Perhaps surprisingly given the prevalence of real-life precognitive dream experiences, there are relatively few controlled lab studies on this topic. The first and best-known studies were conducted by Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman at the Maimonides sleep laboratory in New York, working with the special participant (pictured) Malcolm Bessent (Ullman, Krippner & Vaughan, 1973).

Bessent would sleep with electrodes to detect when he was dreaming, and would be awoken to give dream reports during the night. The next morning, Bessent would be shown the randomly selected target for instance as a slideshow with soundtrack. His task was to dream about the target experience he would have upon awakening. An independent judge would then compare the dream reports with the target and some decoy targets, to judge the degree of similarity between each. Krippner and Ullman found strong positive effects in their studies. A recent review comparing the Maimonides studies with later studies has found that the later studies show near zero effects on average (Storm et al., under review; Watt, 2014; Watt & Valášek, 2015; Watt, Wiseman & Vuillaume, 2015). There are several differences between the Maimonides studies and the later ones. The Maimonides studies used a special participant, a sleep laboratory method where participants were woken during the night to report their dreams, and had poorer methodological quality (Storm et al., under review). Most of the post-Maimonides studies were conducted with unselected participants who slept in their own homes, and therefore were recalling their dreams in the morning rather than providing reports during the night. The more recent studies were also given higher quality ratings (Storm et al., under review). Controlled studies that directly compare possible moderating variables are needed to help researchers home in on the best method for studying dream precognition in the laboratory. The Maimonides researchers also conducted dream telepathy research, and you can read about all of their work in a popular book (Ullman, Krippner & Vaughan, 1973).

Dream ESP studies are quite time consuming to conduct (one night per trial) and need special equipment, and from the 1970s researchers generally turned to a simpler method for inducing a dream-like state known as the Ganzfeld. This work is evaluated in the paper presented by Adrian Parker.

Although relatively few studies have been conducted with dream precognition, a large number of waking state precognition studies have been conducted. These have used so-called ‘forced choice’ methods, where the participant is asked to anticipate which of a small set of future outcomes will occur (e.g. which one of four lights will randomly illuminate – the picture shows  Helmut Schmidt using such a device). These methods are quite different from real-life manifestations of precognition, but have the advantage of rapid and automatic testing and scoring. This allows for a large number of trials, giving greater statistical power and the ability to detect small effects.

This substantial body of research was reviewed by Charles Honorton (pictured) and Diane Ferrari (1989). Honorton and Ferrari combined the results of 309 studies conducted between 1935 and 1987 using widely different outcome measures, for instance animal studies are included where the response is necessarily a simple behavioural measure such as moving away from a future aversive stimulus. The reviewers concluded that there is a small but robust effect in these studies, where participants are able to correctly predict the future event to a greater than chance degree. Honorton and Ferrari were also able to identify conditions associated with better scoring, that might suggest recommendations for future studies.

Small effects can still be important effects, and we encourage further study of this fascinating experience, particularly using controlled methods that more closely approximate the conditions of real life precognition experiences.

References:

Cox, W. E. (1956) Precognition: An analysis, II. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 50, 99-109.

Green, C. E. (1960). Report on enquiry into spontaneous cases. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 53, 97–161.

Honorton, C. & Ferrari, D. C. (1989). ‘Future-telling”. A meta-analysis of forced-choice precognition experiments 1935-1987. Journal of Parapsychology, 53, 281-308. Available from Dean Radin’s website.

Moore, D. (2005) Three in four Americans believe in paranormal. WWW Gallup news report accessed 18th Feb 2013: http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/three-four-americans-believe-paranormal.aspx.

Rhine, L. E. (1954) Frequency of types of experience in spontaneous precognition. JP 18, 93-123.

Schredl, M. and Doll, E. (1998) Emotions in diary dreams. Consciousness and Cognition, 7, 634-646.

Schriever, F. (1987) A 30-year ‘experiment with time’: evaluation of an individual case study of precognitive dreams. EJP 7, 49-72.

Stevenson, I. (1960). A review and analysis of paranormal experiences connected with the sinking of the Titanic. Journal of American Society for Psychical Research, 54, 153–171

Storm, L., Sherwood, S., Roe, C., Tressoldi, P., Rock, A., & di Risio, L. (under review). On the Correspondence between Dream Content and Target Material under Laboratory Conditions: A Meta-Analysis of Dream-ESP Studies, 1966-2016.

Ullman, M., Krippner, S., with Vaughan, A. (1973). Dream telepathy: Experiments in nocturnal ESP. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Van de Castle, R. L. (1977). Sleep and dreams. In B. B. Wolman (Ed.), Handbook of parapsychology (pp. 473-499). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Watt, C. (2014). Precognitive dreaming: Investigating anomalous cognition and psychological factors. Journal of Parapsychology, 78, 115-125.

Watt, C., Ashley, N., Gillett, J., Halewood, M. & Hanson, R. (2014). Psychological factors in precognitive dream experiences: The role of paranormal belief, selective recall and propensity to find correspondences. International Journal of Dream Research, 7, 1-8.

Watt, C., & Valášek, M. (2015). Postscript to Watt (2014) on precognitive dreaming: Investigating anomalous cognition and psychological factors. Journal of Parapsychology, 79, 105-107.

Watt, C., Valášek, M., Cawthron, S. & Almanza, A. (2015). In the eye of the beholder: Uncovering the characteristics of prospectively reported spontaneous precognitive dreams. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 79, 18-33.

Watt, C., Wiseman, R. & Vuillaume, L. (2015). Dream precognition and sensory incorporation: A controlled sleep laboratory study. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 22, 172-190.

 

From Séance to Science: Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick

Who is Psychology’s Greatest Hero? A few days ago, I sparred with my Psychology dept colleagues Dr Stuart Ritchie and Dr Thomas Bak in a fun event at Edinburgh Science Festival.

We each had 12 minutes to make a pitch for our own hero, then had to defend our candidate under questioning from the audience and each other, culminating in an audience vote. We presented in order of hero birth-date – so Stuart went first with the Victorian polymath Francis Galton (1822-1911). Then I presented the case for psychical researcher and women’s education pioneer Eleanor Sidgwick (1845-1946), and Thomas championed the Soviet neuropsychologist and developmental psychologist, Alexander Luria (1902-1977). Thomas did a great job, and Luria clearly won the audience vote, with Sidgwick coming second. Despite a brave effort by Stuart, Galton was scuppered by a piercing final point from the audience about eugenics.

Eleanor Sidgwick is unknown to most psychologists, so why did I choose her? She was an exceptional mathematician, scientist, and reformer – outstanding achievements particularly because in Victorian times most women were expected either to marry and run their husband’s household, or if unmarried to provide domestic support for their unmarried brothers or parents. I wanted to read more about Eleanor (my sources are listed at the end of this piece) and to bring her work to a wider audience. I also wanted to convey the message, perhaps surprising to some, that in their early years, psychology and psychical research were difficult to distinguish from one another.

Eleanor was fortunate to be born (1845) into one of Britain’s most powerful political families. Her father James Maitland Balfour was a wealthy Scottish landowner and railway investor, and her mother was Lady Blanche Harriet Gascoyne-Cecil. Eleanor Balfour was the eldest of 8 children, several of whom had distinguished careers in science or politics, including her younger brother Arthur, who became British Prime Minister.

Lady Blanche’s influence. Lady Blanche took two steps that helped to shape Eleanor’s future. First, she ensured with a codicil to James Balfour’s Will that her daughters would be financially independent, not having to marry to be financially secure (though they would give up this support if they married). Second, she encouraged Eleanor to learn Euclidean geometry and it turned out that Eleanor excelled at mathematics, which she largely taught herself. James Balfour died when Eleanor was only 11, and Lady Blanche was in poor health, so in her twenties Eleanor took over the running of the three grand Balfour family homes – Whittinghame in East Lothian, Strathconon House in Ross-Shire, and 4 Carlton Gardens in London. This phase of her life ended when she married and moved to Cambridge.

Electrical science. Eleanor’s brother-in-law was John William Strutt – later to become Lord Rayleigh who won a Nobel prize in 1904.  In 1879 Strutt took over from James Clark Maxwell as Professor of Experimental Physics and Head of the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge. In 1882, Eleanor contributed to Strutt’s work on the measurement of the fundamental units of electricity, and co-authored three papers for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Meeting Henry Sidgwick. Meanwhile, Eleanor’s brother Arthur was being taught philosophy at Cambridge by Henry Sidgwick. Henry Sidgwick and Arthur shared a fascination with mediumship and Eleanor attended séances with them. It’s thought that this is how Eleanor Balfour met her future husband. Henry drew Eleanor into his interests in psychical research and women’s education. She married Henry in 1876, when she was aged 31. Eleanor and Henry had an unusual Victorian marriage, a working partnership. Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, and Frederic Myers founded the Society for Psychical Research in 1882, and Eleanor was an important contributor to early SPR research projects such as Phantasms of the Living. Henry was also a strong supporter of women’s education, and was co-founder of Newnham College – the second female college at Cambridge. For the rest of her life, Eleanor adopted and extended upon Henry’s two passions, though she herself was not an overtly passionate person.

The Society for Psychical Research. Eleanor was a thorough and skeptical investigator of paranormal claims. Here are just a few examples of her work in psychical research.

Spirit photography. The biologist Alfred Russel Wallace endorsed some spirit photographers, and asked the SPR to investigate. Eleanor took on the task, and in 1891 published On Spirit Photography, detailing the fraudulent methods used by the photographers to dupe bereaved members of the public.

Telepathy. Eleanor was a careful and hands-on investigator. She detailed in one case how she attempted to effectively blindfold a claimant, but concluded ‘no bandages of the eyes can be made satisfactory’. She also learned conjuring and codes, which helped her to detect cheating by the Creery Sisters. Although sometimes revealing fraud and error, in her later years Eleanor became convinced that there was some good evidence in support of telepathy.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. Eleanor wrote the entry on Spiritualism for the 1875-1899 edition of the Encyclopaedia. She enraged Spiritualists by likening séance methods to those used to ‘add glamour’ to the later Greek oracles, and contributed to the departure of some of the more ardent Spiritualists from the SPR.

The psychology of mediumship. The great psychologist and psychical researcher (he was President of the SPR 1894-1895) William James studied  mediums including Mrs Leonora Piper. James and his co-investigators were not just interested in whether there was evidence of telepathy or spirit communication, but sought to understand in psychological terms the behaviour and phenomena displayed by the medium while seemingly in a trance, such as automatic writing and speaking in voices. James said in 1904: “The ‘exploration of the Subliminal’ I regard as the great psychological problem”. Eleanor Sidgwick later (1915) wrote on this topic, modestly describing her work of over 600 pages as ‘a contribution’. Although Eleanor often identified the limitations of mediumistic feats as evidence for the ability to communicate with the deceased, much later in her life she was reported to have become convinced that some such evidence did exist.

Statistics of chance coincidence. Drawing on her mathematical expertise, Eleanor also contributed pioneering statistical work on the role of chance coincidence as a confounding factor in interpreting evidence, for instance on the coincidence between someone seeing an apparition/hallucination of a person, and that distant person experiencing a crisis. This work was presented to one of the early international Congresses of Psychology (Sidgwick, 1897).

Psychology and Psychical Research. From the years of the SPR’s inception to around 1910 psychical research and psychology were difficult to distinguish from one another. Several of the early Congresses of Experimental Psychology were presided over by the founders of the SPR, who presented papers both on putative paranormal phenomena such as telepathy and on psychological aspects such as hypnosis and induced hallucinations. I was intrigued to read in  Sommer’s (2013) thesis that when discussing the name of the new society for psychical research, the founders considered Society (or Association) for Psychological Research. Indeed Sommer concluded that ‘…the only fruitful collective and long-term effort to conduct and consolidate psychological research in England between the early 1880s and the inauguration of the BPS in 1901 came from the inner core of the SPR – Gurney, Myers, the Sidgwicks and several of their collaborators.’ In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the scientific community (not just philosophers and psychologists, but physicists, chemists, and mathematicians) was curious about psychical research, perhaps because of technological developments such as the discovery of electromagnetism and the invention of wireless telegraphy that made people question what might be the limits of human communication. Later, psychical research became marginalized as psychology sought to demarcate itself as a science, though many great psychologists continued to have an interest in anomalous experiences.

A British psychology. Eleanor contributed so much to the early years of the SPR, having an impact on the distinctive anti-reductionist ‘flavour’ of British psychology at that time, which held that ‘the categories and terminology of the physical sciences were not basically applicable to the mind’ (Oppenheim, 1985). What’s incredible to me is that all this was done alongside her primary occupation, at Newnham College, Cambridge.

Newnham College. In addition to donating over £30,000 of her own money to Newnham, from 1876-1919 Eleanor was the college’s Treasurer. Running the Balfour family estates no doubt helped to prepare her for this role. She was no mere book-keeper, but entirely and successfully controlled the finances of the college, including ensuring that there were resources substantially to expand the college’s buildings and student body. Amazingly, in addition to being Treasurer, Eleanor was Vice Principal 1880-1882, and Principal 1892-1910. With her work at Newnham, Eleanor’s influence and agenda was felt. She ensured that research was valued for its contribution to the intellectual health of the college, establishing research fellowships. Also, she tirelessly and effectively pressed for the entry of women into University examinations, and for the awarding of degrees to women students – though it took much longer for Cambridge to accept the latter.

Eleanor supported the Suffragette cause, but did not approve of violent protest. So she pursued women’s education, and educational reform more generally, with a quiet but steely resolve.

Killer stats. More than once, Eleanor demolished baseless and lazy arguments with data. For example, a journalist ill-advisedly opined in the Pall Mall Gazette: ‘Intellectual success can only be achieved by women at the cost of physical deterioration and consequent weakening of the stock’. Eleanor promptly organised a committee representing both Oxford and Cambridge, and circulated over 500 questionnaires to women students, and to the sisters of women students as a comparison group. She evaluated the health of students, of their parents and children, hours of sleep, exercise, and in 1890 reported the results in The Health Statistics of Women Students. The critics were silenced.

Honorary degrees. Eleanor was awarded 4 honorary degrees. Tom Ruffles has blogged about these (link in sources below). The final one (LLD) was awarded by the University of Edinburgh when she was aged 79, in July 1923. Ruffles obtained the speech given by the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Prof James Mackintosh, as he awarded the degree. This nicely sums up her achievements:

“.. it would be hard to find a lady better entitled to University honour or more deserving of the gratitude of her sex. During her long connection with Newnham College as Principal and Bursar, she proved herself a sane and judicious leader in the movement for the Higher Education of Women. She has contributed materially to the progress of Electrical Science by the part she took in investigating the absolute values of the fundamental electrical units. In the more occult region of psychical research, she has pursued her inquiries in the same strictly scientific spirit, not without a certain measure of philosophic doubt. “

Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick was too self-effacing (and perhaps too busy!) to write an autobiography, and sadly as yet there is no biography. That’s why I was keen to read what I could about her life and to introduce Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick to the Science Festival audience. Unlike some so-called scientists, she did not dismiss psychic claims out of hand, but engaged with them as a scientist should, testing and questioning them. Eleanor was an outstanding scientist and reformer, in times when it was immensely difficult for a woman to achieve such things.

Sources:

Oppenheim, J. (1985). The Other World. Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oppenheim, J. (1995). A mother’s role, a daughter’s duty: Lady Blanche Balfour, Eleanor Sidgwick, and feminist perspectives. Journal of British Studies, 34, 196-232.

Ruffles, T. (2010). Eleanor Sidgwick and her doctorates.

Shills, E. & Blacker, C. (Eds) (1992). Cambridge Women: Twelve Portraits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sidgwick, E. M. (1897). On a statistical enquiry into hallucinations. Dritter Internationaler Congress für Psychologie (pp. 390-392). Munich: J.F. Lehmann.

Sidgwick, E. M. (1915). A contribution to the study of the psychology of Mrs. Piper’s trance phenomena. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 28, 1-652.

Sidgwick, E. (1938). Mrs. Henry Sidgwick. A Memoir by Her Niece. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.

Sommer, A. (2013). Crossing the boundaries of mind and body: Psychical research and the origins of modern psychology. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University College London.

 

Representing parapsychology at #icps2017vie

Prof Etzel Cardena, of Lund University, kindly invited me to contribute to a symposium on anomalous experiences at the International Convention of Psychological Science meeting in Vienna.  ICYMI here is a wee preview of our symposium and my presentation.

Title: Extraordinary (Anomalous) Experiences: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Speakers:

1. (Re)introducing the Psychology of Anomalous Experience.
Etzel Cardeña, Ph. D., Lund University

2. A Beneficial Cultural Reinterpretation of Dissociative Phenomena.
Yvonne Schaffler, Ph. D., University of Vienna, and Etzel Cardeña

3. Putative Precognitive Dreaming: Psychological Mechanisms and Parapsychological Research.
Chris Roe, Ph. D., University of Northampton

4. The Role of Sensory Habituation (Ganzfeld) in the Possible Occurrence of ESP.
Caroline Watt, Ph. D., University of Edinburgh

Time will be tight for each speaker, but fortunately I will benefit from the groundwork laid by Etzel, Yvonne, and Chris, who will consider links between anomalous experience and possible paranormal phenomena. My own presentation focuses on ganzfeld ESP research. First I discuss the ‘noise reduction’ model that was introduced by Charles Honorton in 1977 and William Braud in 1978, in response to converging evidence that sensory habituation and direction of attention towards internal processes might be conducive to psychic experiences. The noise reduction model assumes that possible extrasensory information resembles a weak ‘signal’ that can be swamped by somatic and cognitive ‘noise’. By relaxing and habituating the participant to homogeneous sensory stimulation, the participant’s attention is directed towards their internal thoughts, images, and impressions, and these impressions are considered to become more salient as other noise and distraction is reduced.

I’ll explain that the ganzfeld method was adopted by parapsychologists in response to the noise reduction model, as a way to create a seemingly psi-conducive internal attention state, for testing hypothesised ExtraSensory Perception (ESP) in the laboratory. (Actually ganzfeld was first used by Gestalt psychologists to study perception.) And since the first ganzfeld ESP studies in the late 1970s, 5 meta-analyses of a total of 112 ganzfeld studies have been published, between 1985 and 2010.  (A meta-analysis is a quantitative review of the results of a group of studies using similar methods to test the same hypothesis.)

The ganzfeld ESP meta-analyses are by Ray Hyman in 1985, Charles Honorton in 1985 (both published in Journal of Parapsychology), Daryl Bem and Charles Honorton in 1994, Julie Milton and Richard Wiseman in 1999, and Lance Storm, Patrizio Tressoldi, and Lorenzo Di Risio in 2010 (all published in Psychological Bulletin.) All but one of these meta-analyses found results consistent with the ESP hypothesis (that is, correct identification of the randomly-chosen ‘target’ at a rate greater than expected by chance alone.) This has led to some researchers claiming that the ganzfeld method has produced replicable evidence for psi.

Nevertheless right from the start there has been debate over how to interpret these findings. Those meta-analyses that concluded there was evidence for ESP, as well as those that came to the opposite conclusion, were criticised on various grounds, including: definition of ‘standard’ ganzfeld; statistical methods of the meta-analyses; cut-off dates and inclusion criteria; heterogeneity of results, and how to handle extremely high- or low-scoring studies.

For me, the ganzfeld debate is interesting in part because of what it reveals about the challenges of conducting research into controversial claims. The fact that both psi proponents and psi skeptics have criticised meta-analyses whose conclusions contradict their expectations highlights the limitations of meta-analysis as it is usually conducted (i.e., after the results of the studies to be meta-analysed are known). I am not the first to point out that retrospective meta-analysis is open to researcher bias because the researcher has to make many decisions in conducting the meta-analysis. These decisions can be influenced by knowledge of the outcome of the studies to be meta-analysed. Jim Kennedy and I have recently published a paper in which we expand on these issues and discuss possible solutions, particularly what we call ‘registration-based prospective meta-analysis’ (click here).

Of course any retrospective meta-analysis, including those conducted into less controversial topics in psychology, has the same vulnerabilities. Don’t make the mistake of concluding that just because we are discussing a debate over parapsychological meta-analyses, this means that parapsychology alone faces replication challenges and everything is rosy for other disciplines. It’s just that due to the nature of the claim that is being tested in parapsychology, the field invites greater scrutiny. My argument is that this scrutiny – which often comes from within the field of parapsychology – can drive up standards so that practices in parapsychology can be favourably compared with our sister disciplines.

In their presentations, Etzel, Yvonne and Chris wilI make the point that the study of anomalous experiences can increase our understanding of human capabilities. I’ll conclude our symposium with further examples of how the study of anomalous experiences has helped to develop methodological and statistical techniques that can benefit science more broadly.

The convention is next weekend. I’ve just completed my slides, and will be presenting a dry-run to check timings etc. at Wednesday’s KPU research meeting. To find out more about the ICPS, click on the banner below.

 

Things that go Bump! in the mind

Are you interested in the science behind table-tilting, near-death experiences and ghostly sightings? What is the surprising link between a telepathic experience and one of the greatest breakthroughs in neuroscience? I’m very excited to be speaking about this, and much much more, in just a couple of days from now, at Brighton Science Festival.

The organisers just informed me that tickets are nearly sold out, so don’t delay if you want to book to guarantee your place. Click here for the full event listing.