that used only laboratory-assigned senders (44% vs. 26%), i(23) = 2.39, p = .025, two-tailed. The Joint Communiqué After their published exchange in 1985, Hyman and Honor- ton agreed to contribute a joint communiqué to the subsequent discussion that was published in 1986. First, they set forth their areas of agreement and disagreement: We agree that there is an overall significant effect in this data base that cannot reasonably be explained by selective reporting or multiple analysis. We continue to differ over the degree to which the effect constitutes evidence for psi, but we agree that the final verdict awaits the outcome of future experiments conducted by a broader range of investigators and according to more stringent standards. (Hyman & Honorton, 1986, p. 351) They then spelled out in detail the “more stringent stan- dards” they believed should govern future experiments. These standards included strict security precautions against sensory leakage, testing and documentation of randomization methods for selecting targets and sequencing the judging pool, statistical correction for multiple analyses, advance specification of the status of the experiment (e.g., pilot study or confirmatory ex- periment), and full documentation in the published report of the experimental procedures and the status of statistical tests (e.g., planned or post hoc). The National Research Council Report In 1988, the National Research Council (NRC) of the Na- tional Academy of Sciences released a widely publicized report commissioned by the U.S. Army that assessed several contro- versial technologies for enhancing human performance, includ- ing accelerated learning, neurolinguistic programming, mental practice, biofeedback, and parapsychology (Druckman & Swets, 1988; summarized in Swets & Bjork, 1990). The report’s conclusion concerning parapsychology was quite negative: “The Committee finds no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of para- psychological phenomena” (Druckman & Swets, 1988, p. 22). An extended refutation strongly protesting the committee’s treatment of parapsychology has been published elsewhere (Palmer et al., 1989). The pertinent point here is simply that the NRC’s evaluation of the ganzfeld studies does not reflect an additional, independent examination of the ganzfeld database but is based on the same meta-analysis conducted by Hyman that we have discussed in this article. Hyman chaired the NRC’s Subcommittee on Parapsychol- ogy, and, although he had concurred with Honorton 2 years ear- lier in their joint communiqué that “there is an overall signifi- cant effect in this data base that cannot reasonably be explained by selective reporting or multiple analysis” (p. 351) and that “significant outcomes have been produced by a number of different investigators” (p. 352), neither of these points is ac- knowledged in the committee’s report, The NRC also solicited a background report from Harris and Rosenthal (1988a), which provided the committee with a com- parative methodological analysis of the five controversial areas just listed. Harris and Rosenthal noted that, of these areas, Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R0032001 10001 -4 ANOMALOUS INFORMATION TRANSFER 9 “only the Ganzfeld ESP studies [the only psi studies they evalu- ated] regularly meet the basic requirements of sound experi- mental design” (p. 53), and they concluded that it would be implausible to entertain the null given the combined p from these 28 studies. Given the various problems or flaws pointed out by Hyman and Honorton. . . we might estimate the obtained accuracy rate to be about 1/3. . . when the accuracy rate expected under the null is 1/4. (p. 51)? The Autoganzfeld Studies In 1983, Honorton and his colleagues initiated a new series of ganzfeld studies designed to avoid the methodological prob- lems he and others had identified in earlier studies (Honorton, 1979; Kennedy, 1979). These studies complied with ail of the detailed guidelines that he and Hyman were to publish later in their joint communiqué. The program continued until Septem- ber 1989, when a loss of funding forced the Laboratory to close. The major innovations of the new studies were computer con- trol of the experimental protocol—hence the name autoganz- feld—and the introduction of videotaped film clips as target stimuli. Method The basic design of the autoganzfeld studies was the same as that described earlier*: A receiver and sender were sequestered in separate, acoustically isolated chambers. After a 14-min period of progressive relaxation, the receiver underwent ganzfeld stimulation while describ- ing his or her thoughts and images aloud for 30 min. Meanwhile, the sender concentrated on a randomly selected target. At the end of the ganzfeld period, the receiver was shown four stimuli and, without know- ing which of the four had been the target, rated each stimulus for its similarity to his or her mentation during the ganzfeld. The targets consisted of 80 still pictures (static targets) and 80 short video segments complete with soundtracks (dynamic targets), all re- corded on videocassette. The static targets included art prints, pho- tographs, and magazine advertisements; the dynamic targets included excerpts of approximately !-min duration from motion pictures, TV shows, and cartoons. The 160 targets were arranged in judging sets of four static or four dynamic targets each, constructed to minimize simi- larities among targets within a set. Target selection and presentation. The VCR containing the taped targets was interfaced to the controlling computer, which selected the target and controlled its repeated presentation to the sender during the ganzfeld period, thus eliminating the need for a second experimenter to accompany the sender. After the ganzfeld period, the computer ran- domly sequenced the. four-clip judging set and presented it to the re- ceiver ona TV monitor for judging. The receiver used a computer game paddle to make his or her ratings on a 40-point scale that appeared on 3In a troubling development, the chair of the NRC Committee phoned Rosenthal and asked him to delete the parapsychology section of the paper (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, September 15, 1992). Although Rosenthal refused to do so, that section of the Harris- Rosenthal paper is nowhere cited in the NRC report. * Because Honorton and his colleagues have complied with the Hy- man-Honorton specification that experimental reports be sufficiently complete to permit others to reconstruct the investigator's procedures, readers who wish to know more detail than we provide here are likely to find whatever they need in the archival publication of these studies in the Journal of Parapsychology (Honorton et al., 1990). Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4
Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001 -4 > 10 DARYL J. BEM AND CHARLES HONORTON the TV monitor after each clip was shown. The receiver was permitted to see each clip and to change the ratings repeatedly until he or she was satisfied. The computer then wrote these and other data from the session into a file on a floppy disk. At that point, the sender moved to the receiv- er’s chamber and revealed the identity of the target to both the receiver and the experimenter. Note that the experimenter did not even know the identity of the fourclip judging set until it was displayed to the re- ceiver for judging. Randomization. The random selection of the target and sequencing of the judging set were controlled by a noise-based random number gen- erator interfaced to the computer. Extensive testing confirmed that the generator was providing a uniform distribution of values throughout the full target range (1-160). Tests on the actual frequencies observed during the experiments confirmed that targets were, on average, selected uniformly from among the 4 clips within each judging set and that the . 4 judging sequences used were uniformly distributed across sessions. Additional control features. The receiver's and sender’s rooms were sound-isolated, electrically shielded chambers with single-door access that could be continuously monitored by the experimenter. There was two-way intercom communication between the experimenter and the receiver but only one-way communication into the sender’s room: thus, neither the experimenter nor the receiver could monitor events inside the sender’s room. The archival record for each session includes an au- diotape containing the receiver's mentation during the ganzfeld period and all verbal exchanges between the experimenter and the receiver throughout the experiment. The automated ganzfeld protocol has been examined by several dozen parapsychologists and behavioral researchers from other fields, including well-known critics of parapsychology. Many have partici- pated as subjects or observers. All have expressed satisfaction with the handling of security issues and controls. Parapsychologists have often been urged to employ magicians as con- sultants to ensure that the experimental protocols are not vulnerable either to inadvertent sensory leakage or to deliberate cheating. Two “mentalists,” magicians who specialize in the simulation of psi, have examined the autoganzfeld system and protocol. Ford Kross, a profes- sional mentalist and officer of the mentalist’s professional organization, the Psychic Entertainers Association, provided the following written statement “In my professional capacity as a mentalist, I have reviewed Psychophysical Research Laboratories’ automated ganzfeld system and found it to provide excellent security against deception by subjects” (personal communication, May, 1989). Daryl J. Bem has also performed as a mentalist for many years and is a member of the Psychic Entertainers Association. As mentioned in the author note, this article had its origins in a 1983 visit he made to Honorton’s laboratory, where he was asked to critically examine the research protocol from the perspective of a mentalist, a research psy- chologist, and a subject. Needless to say, this article would not exist if he did not concur with Ford Kross’s assessment of the security procedures. Experimental Studies Altogether, 100 men and 140 women participated as receivers in 354 sessions during the research program.> The participants ranged in age from 17 to 74 years (M4 = 37.3, SD = 11.8), with a mean formal educa- tion of 15.6 years (SD = 2.0). Eight separate experimenters, including Honorton, conducted the studies. The experimental program included three pilot and eight formal studies, Five of the formal studies used novice (first-time) participants who served as the receiver in one session each. The remaining three formal studies used experienced participants. Pilot studies. Sample sizes were not preset in the three pilot studies. Study 1 comprised 22 sessions and was conducted during the initial development and testing of the autoganzfeld system. Study 2 comprised 9 sessions testing a procedure in which the experimenter, rather than the receiver, served as the judge at the end of the session. Study 3 com- prised 35 sessions and served as practice for participants who had com- pleted the allotted number of sessions in the ongoing formal studies but who wanted additional ganzfeld experience. This study also included several demonstration sessions when TV film crews were present. Novice studies. Studies 101-104 were each designed to test 50 par- ticipants who had had no prior ganzfeld experience; each participant served as the receiver in a single ganzfeld session. Study 104 included 16 of 20 students recruited from the Juilliard School in New York City to test an artistically gifted sample. Study 105 was initiated to accommo- date the overflow of participants who had been recruited for Study 104, including the 4 remaining Juilliard students. The sample size for this study was set to 25, but only 6 sessions had been completed when the laboratory closed. For purposes of exposition, we divided the 56 sessions from Studies 104 and 105 into two parts: Study 104/105(a) comprises the 36 non-Juilliard participants, and Study 104/105(b) comprises the 20 Juilliard students. Study 201. This study was designed to retest the most promising participants from the previous studies. The number of trials was set to 20, but only 7 sessions with 3 participants had been completed when the laboratory closed. Study 301. This study was designed to compare static and dynamic targets. The sample size was set to 50 sessions. Twenty-five experienced participants each served as the receiver in 2 sessions. Unknown to the participants, the computer control program was modified to ensure that - they would each have | session with a static target and | session with a dynamic target. Study 302. This study was designed to examine a dynamic target set that had yielded a particularly high hit rate in the previous studies. The study involved experienced participants who had had no prior ex- perience with this particular target set and who were unaware that only one target set was being sampled. Each served as the receiver in a single session. The design called for the study to continue until 15 sessions were completed with each of the targets, but only 25 sessions had been completed when the laboratory closed. The 11 studies just described comprise all sessions conducted during the 6.5 years of the program. There is no “file drawer” of unreported sessions. ° Results Overall hit rate. As in the earlier meta-analysis, receivers’ ratings were analyzed by tallying the proportion of hits achieved and calculating the exact binomial probability for the observed number of hits compared with the chance expectation of .25. As noted earlier, 240 participants contributed 354 sessions. For reasons discussed later, Study 302 is analyzed separately, reduc- ing the number of sessions in the primary analysis to 329. As Table | shows, there were 106 hits in the 329 sessions, a hit rate of 32% (z = 2.89, p = .002, one-tailed), with a 95% confidence interval from 30% to 35%. This corresponds to an effect size (a) of .59, with a 95% confidence interval from .53 to 64, - Table 1 also shows that when Studies 104 and 105 are com- bined and re-divided into Studies 104/105(a) and 104/ 105(b), 9 > A recent review of the original computer files uncovered a duplicate record in the autoganzfeld database. This has now been eliminated, re- ducing by one the number of subjects and sessions. As a result, some of the numbers presented in this article differ slightly from those in Hon- orton et al. (1990). Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4
Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4 ANOMALOUS INFORMATION TRANSFER 11 Table 1 Outcome by Study N N N % Effect Study Study/subject description subjects _ trials hits hits sizer Zz 1 Pilot 19 22 8 36 62 0.99 2 Pilot 4 9 3 33 60 0.25 3 Pilot 24 35 10 29 55 0.32 101 Novice 50 50 12 24 47 —0.30 102 Novice 50 50 18 36 63 1.60 103. Novice 50 50 15 30 55 0.67 104/105(a) Novice 36 36 12 33 60 0.97 104/105(b) Juilliard sample 20 20 10 50 .75 2.20 201 Experienced - 3 7 3. 43 69 0.69 301 Experienced 25 50 15 30 56 0.67 302 Experienced 25 25 16 54? 787 3.048 Overall (Studies 1-301) 240 329 106 32 59 2.89 i Note. Allzscores are based on the exact binomial probability, with p = .25 and q = .75. 4 Adjusted for response bias; the hit rate actually observed was 64%, of the 10 studies yield positive effect sizes, with a mean effect size (3) of .61, (9) = 4.44, p = .0008, one-tailed. This effect size is equivalent to a four-alternative hit rate of 34%. Alternatively, if Studies 104 and 105 are retained as separate studies, 9 of the 10 studies again yield positive effect sizes, with a mean effect size (rr) of .62, t(9) = 3.73, p = .002, one-tailed. This effect size is equivalent to a fouralternative hit rate of 35% and is identical to that found across the 28 studies of the earlier meta-analysis.® Considered together, sessions with novice participants (Stud- ies 101-105) yielded a statistically significant hit rate of 32.5% (p = .009), which is not significantly different from the 31.6% hit rate achieved by experienced participants in Studies 201 and 301. And, finally, each of the eight experimenters also achieved a positive effect size, with a mean = of .60, ((7) = 3.44, p = .005, one-tailed. The Juilliard sample. There are several reports in the liter- ature of a relationship between creativity or artistic ability and psi performance (Schmeidler, 1988). To explore this possibility in the ganzfeld setting, 10 male and 10 female undergraduates were recruited from the Juilliard School. Of these, 8 were music students, 10 were drama students, and 2 were dance students. Each served as the receiver in a single session in Study 104 or 105. As shown in Table 1, these students achieved a hit rate of 50% (p = .014), one of the five highest hit rates ever reported for a single sample in a ganzfeld study. The musicians were partic- ularly successful: 6 of the 8 (75%) successfully identified their targets (p = .004; further details about this sample and their ganzfeld performance were reported in Schlitz & Honorton, 1992). Study size and effect size. Thereisa significant negative cor- relation across the 10 studies listed in Table | between the num- ber of sessions included in a study and the study’s effect size (7), r= —.64, (8) = 2.36, p < .05, two-tailed. This is reminiscent of Hyman’s discovery that the smaller studies in the original ganzfeld database were disproportionately likely to report sta- tistically significant results. He interpreted this finding as evi- dence for a bias against the reporting of small studies that fail to achieve significant results. A similar interpretation cannot be applied to the autoganzfeld studies, however, because there are no unreported sessions. One reviewer of this article suggested that the negative corre- lation might reflect a decline effect in which earlier sessions of a study are more successful than later sessions. If there were such an effect, then studies with fewer sessions would show larger effect sizes because they would end before the decline could set in. To check this possibility, we computed point-biserial corre- lations between hits (1) or misses (0) and the session number within each of the 10 studies. All of the correlations hovered around zero; six were positive, four were negative, and the over- all mean was .01. An inspection of Table | reveals that the negative correlation derives primarily from the two studies with the largest effect sizes: the 20 sessions with the Juilliard students and the 7 ses- sions of Study 201, the study specifically designed to retest the most promising participants from the previous studies. Accord- ingly, it seems likely that the larger effect sizes of these two stud- ies—and hence the significant negative correlation between the number of sessions and the effect size—reflect genuine perfor- mance differences between these two small, highly selected sam- ples and other autoganzfeld participants. Study 302. All of the studies except Study 302 randomly sampled from a pool of 160 static and dynamic targets. Study 302 sampled from a single, dynamic target set that had yielded a particularly high hit rate in the previous studies. The four film clips in this set consisted of a scene of a tidal wave from the movie Clash of the Titans, a high-speed sex scene from 4 Clock- work Orange, a scene of crawling snakes from a TV documen- tary, and a scene from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. 6 As noted above, the laboratory was forced to close before three of the formal studies could be completed. If we assume that the remaining trials in Studies 105 and 201 would have yielded only chance results, this would reduce the overall z for the first 10 autoganzfeld studies from 2.89 to 2.76 (p = .003). Thus, inclusion of the two incomplete studies does not pose an optional stopping problem. The third incomplete study, Study 302, is discussed below. Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4
; Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4 12 DARYL J. BEM AND CHARLES HONORTON The experimental design called for this study to continue un- til each of the clips had served as the target 15 times. Unfortu- nately, the premature termination of this study at 25 sessions left an imbalance in the frequency with which each clip had served as the target. This means that the high hit rate observed (64%) could well be inflated by response biases. As an illustration, water imagery is frequently reported by receivers in ganzfeld sessions, whereas sexual imagery 15 rarely reported. (Some participants probably are reluctant both to re- port sexual imagery and to give the highest rating to the sex- related clip.) Ifa video clip containing popular imagery (such as water) happens to appear as a target more frequently than a clip containing unpopular imagery (such as sex), 4 hi gh hit rate might simply reflect the coincidence of those frequencies of oc- currence with participants’ response biases. And, as the second column of Table 2 reveals, the tidal wave clip did in fact appear ' more frequently as the target than did the sex clip. More gener- ally, the second and third columns of Table 2 show that the fre- quency with which each film clip was ranked first closely matches the frequency with which each appeared as the target. One can adjust for this problem by using the observed fre- quencies in these two columns to compute the hit rate expected if there were no psi effect. In particular, one can multiply each proportion in the second column by the corresponding propor- tion in the third column—yielding the joint probability that the clip was the target and that it was ranked first—and then sum across the four clips. As shown in the fourth column of Table 2, this computation yields an overall expected hit rate of 34.08%. When the observed hit rate of 64% is compared with this base- line, the effect size (A) is .61. As shown in Table |, this is equiv- alent to a fouralternative hit rate of 54%, or a m value of .78, and is statistically significant (z = 3.04, p = .0012). . The psi effect can be seen even more clearly in the remaining columns of Table 2, which control for the differential popularity of the imagery in the clips by displaying how frequently cach was ranked first when it was the target and how fi requently il was ranked first when it was one of the control clips (decoys). As can be seen, each of the four clips was selected as the target relatively more frequently when it was the target than when it was a decoy, a difference that is significant for three of the four clips. On average, a clip was identified as the target 58% of the time when it was the target and only 14% of the time when it was a decoy. Dynamic versus static targets. The success of Study 302 raises the question of whether dynamic targets arc, In general, more effective than static targets. This possibility was also sug- gested by the earlier meta-analysis, which revealed that studies using multiple-image targets (View Master stereoscopic slide reels) obtained significantly higher hit rates than did studies us- ing single-image targets. By adding motion and sound, the video clips might be thought of as high-tech versions of the View Mas- ter reels, The 10 autoganzfeld studies that randomly sampled from both dynamic and static target pools yielded 164 sessions with dynamic targets and 165 sessions with static targets. As pre- dicted, sessions using dynamic targets yiclded significantly more hits than did sessions using static targets (37% vs. 27%: Fisher’s exact p < .04). ; Sender-receiver pairing. The earlier meta-analysis revealed that studies in which participants were free to bring in friends Fisher’s exact p .032 029 300 027 Difference 46 62 20 46 44 14 Ranked first when decoy wl (2/18) 05 (1/22) 05 (1/21) Ranked first when target 57 (4/7) 67 (2/3) 25 (1/4) 58 hit rate (%) 6.72 1.44 1.28 34.08 24.64 Expected Relaave frequency of frst place ranking 24 (6/25) 12 (3/25) 08 (2/25) 36 (14/25) an target es (7/25) 12 (3/25) 16 (4/25) 44 (11/25) Relanve frayacecy Table 2 Study 302: Expected Hit Rate and Proportion of Sessions in Which Each Video Clip Was Ranked First When It Was a Target and When It Was a Decoy Suber chip Vidal wave Saakes Sea scene Bugs Bunny Overall Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4