Approved For Releastg#00 1/03/07 :.CIA-RDP96-00787RQ90400100021-6 wren ee wees ey ‘Ihe Journal of Parapsychology VOLUME 35 MARCH 1971 NUMBER 1 a ene REPETITION OF THE FRENCH PRECOGNITION EXPERIMENTS WITH MICE! - By Watter J. Levy, Jr., L. ALLEN Mayo, Jr., Eve Anprf, AND Anita McRae? ABSTRACT: Six series of exploratory precognition tests with mice and jirds were carried out with the purpose of confirming the work of Duval and Montredon in France. The experiment tested the ability of the animals to use their psi to ‘avoid jumping into whichever side of their cage would be electrified on each forthcoming five-second trial. Out of 1,154 random-behavior trials, the animals made a hit (avoided shock) 612 times (CR = 2.06; P < .05, two-tailed), Since the apparatus monitored the animal’s position all the time it was in the cage (in the French work there was only selective monitoring), it was possible to reanalyze the data for evidence of psi in the animal behavior patterns. It was found that the animals significantly avoided shocks when the just-previous trial had been a nonshock trial (P <.015). If the just-previous trials were shock trials, however, the number of hits was not significant. Another test effect was that trials following a period of low activity (fewer than three jumps back and forth during the intertrial period) were also significant (P = .015); trials fol- lowing three or more jumps were not. When both successful conditions (non- ‘shock and low activity) were combined, they gave an even more significant separation (P = .006). Mr, Levy is a second-year medical student at the Medical College of Georgia; Mr. Mayo is a graduate student in zoology at Duke University; Miss André is eroployed as a librarian in Victoria, Australias; and Miss McRae is a research assis- tant at the Institute for Parapsychology.—Ed, Rte I. THe PRELIMINARY SERIES In 1968, two French biologists, Duval and Montredon,® published a report on experiments which gave evidence that mice were able to * This work was supported by the Institute for Parapsychology of the Founda- tion for Research on the Nature of Man. * The authors wish to express their thanks to Drs, J. B. Rhine and R. L. Morris for valuable advice and encouragement and to Mrs. Dorothy H. Pope for much of the work of compiling the paper. Miss Carol Schaber, Dr. Robert Brier, Dr, Helmut Schmidt, and Miss Barbara Benton made important contributions at several points. * These are assumed names, Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100021-6 pores ge E
Approved For Releas&#001/03/07 :. CIA-RDP96-00787RQ90400100021-6 2 The Journal of Parapsychology use precognition to avoid shock as they jumped back and forth in ‘the two sections of a mildly electrified cage (1). This work was outstanding in a number of ways. It won the McDougall Award as an important scientific contribution; it came from a respected biological laboratory; and it was based on work with a species not hitherto tested by researchers, who had already worked with cats, dogs, and pigeons, The French work was also the first precognition test with any kind of animal and—what is more important perhaps—it was the first completely automated test. At _ least, it went further than any previous work toward eliminating psi on the part of the experimenter which, as Rhine and Feather had pointed out (3), stood in the way of a conclusive interpretation of the earlier evidence for psi in animals. , From the point of view of methodology in psi research, however, the most effective advance in the French research was its reliance on the technique for selecting “random-behavior” trials, an idea first introduced by Osis and Foster (2) but not applied as a primary experimental device hitherto. This is a technique for sifting out those trials in which it is obvious that ESP probably could not have been operating. Osis and Foster had observed that when side habits dom- inated the behavior of the cats being tested, the ESP scores were lower than on the other trials. Duval and Montredon applied the same principle to the mouse work; by eliminating those trials in which the animal was obviously responding to non-psi factors—such as shock—they obtained more significant results than when these trials were included in the total. This procedure was reliable and efficient, and it was an important step forward for parapsychology. Over and above these specific points of importance in the French work was the experimenters’ own expressed hope that they had made some progress toward discovering the “guinea pig” that is needed for the greater effectiveness of the research program in parapsychol- ogy. Their anticipation played a large part in motivating the authors of the present work to attempt a replication. The automation in the French tests seemed to have eliminated the experimenter as a source of psi and to have centered on the animal as the producer of the re- sults; and it appeared reasonable that replication with other rodents could be expected to follow. Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100021-6 ; : PARMA 8 ANAL mS wer nt MRR Af eR YY AE apErP ~ SNaAERO A TREE ED SON A rE TE NPR eA Re ae aa UREN Meat lendatme  et eben eepS Sane chose