Pages 224-227 Notes Psi Phenomena 28/08/2008 17:04:00 Psi anomalous processes of information nd/or energy transfer that cannot currently be explained in terms of known biological or physical mechanisms. o Questions such as: whether humans can 1) acquire information in ways that do not involve stimulation of the known sense organs or 2) influence physical events by purely mental means Parapsychology beside or beyond psychology o Extrasensory Perception (ESP) Response to external stimuli without any known sensory contact Telepathy Transference of thought from 1 person to another without the mediation of any known channel of sensory communication Clairvoyance perception of objects or events that do not provide a stimulus to the known senses Precognition perception of a future event that could not be anticipated thru any known inferential process o Psychokinesis mental influence over physical events w/o the intervention of any known physical force Experimental Evidence Ganzfeld Procedure tests for telepathic communication between a participant who serves as the receiver and another participant who serves as the sender o Receiver is put in a soundproof room and is partially isolated. Translucent ping pong ball halves are taped over the eyes and headphones are put on ears. Room lit with diffused red light. White noise played through headphones. o Sender sits in another soundproof room and a random visual stimulus is used as the target for the session. The sender concentrates and the receiver tries to describe it by providing a continuous verbal report of his or he mental imagery and free associations. Then 4 pics are showed to the person and they pick which one matches most to the things they described. 38% of the time people pick the right target. The Debate Over The Evidence The Replication Problem o Parapsychology has failed to produce a single reliable demonstration of psi that can be replicated by other investigators o Even the same investigator with the same subjects doesn t get the same response. o Meta-Analysis a statistical technique that treats the accumulated studies of a particular phenomenon as a single grand experiment and each study as a single observation Inadequate Controls o Problem of Sensory Leakage flawed procedures that would permit a participant to obtain the communicated info in normal sensory fashion, either inadvertently or thru deliberate cheating are particularly fatal. o There is no persuasive way of arguing that the flaw did not contribute to a positive outcome. You just have to completely redo the experiment. The File-Drawer Problem o The File-Drawer Problem when lots of people study the same thing and only one person gets a positive result. The positive one is publicized, but the wrong ones never get any recognition and the scientists just forget about it and put the experiment in their file-drawers. o o Nobody knows how many experiments are filed away, never to be heard of. Because of this, may studies have lower success rates than we are aware of. <a href="/keyword/anecdotal-evidence/" >anecdotal evidence</a> There are many problems that plague experimental evidence: nonreplicability, inadequate controls, and the file-drawer problem. 28/08/2008 17:04:00 28/08/2008 17:04:00