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The Journal of Parapsychology
number of times)
before the next five-second
trial,
it would be in
the original side of the cage and would appear not to have jumped at
all in the interval between trials. Our apparatus recorded the animal’s
position continually and therefore made
it possible to
sift out many
more random-behavior trials from the total data ; and
if the scoring
rate was high, a greater incidence of psi would be indicated in the
data.
A further difference caused by their selective monitoring was that
their animal was in the dark except immediately before and during
the five-second
trial.
With our apparatus,
the light beams, which
were the animal’s source of light, remained on constantly.
Apparatus
The testing apparatus comprised six components
: a shock box,
a position
indicator, a random number generator,
a
logic
circuit,
a shock control, and a recording apparatus.
A. The shock box, or testing cage, was a clear, bottomless lucite
box measuring 6 1/2
" x 6%" x 6".
It rested on an electrically wired
grid. A low barrier
1y8
" high and )4" thick divided the cage into
two halves (A and B in Figure 1), each half wired independently.
(See Figure 1.)
B. On
those
sides which were
at
right angles
to
the barrier,
there were mirrors, used in conjunction with a light source and a
photocell
in each half of the box to indicate the animal’s position.
If the reflection of the light beam in the mirror was cut, the animal
was considered to be present;
if
it remained intact to shine on the
photocell, the animal was considered not there. The shock box, with
the position-indicating apparatus, was
in a dimly
lit room separate
from the remainder of the equipment.
The separation varied from
an adjacent room,
at
first, to one that was two
floors distant later
in the experiment.
C. The random target generator was an electronic device which
randomly picked side A or B as the target side for each trial. There
was one target selection (and therefore one trial) every minute. The
random number generator produced a rapidly oscillating sine wave
‘The main work
of designing and
constructing
the
apparatus,
including the
random number generator, was done by Allen Mayo at the Institute for Parapsy-
chology.
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Repetition of French Experiments with Mice
Barrier.
Light Source
Side A
Fig.
1. Diagram of testing cage.
which caused a flip-flop circuit to go from state A to state B, or the
reverse, with the start of each full cycle it produced.
Thus, when a
target was
called
for,
the
flip-flop st0pped
in either state
’A™
viceIT
CamC fr°m the faCt that the error of the timing de-
vice calling for a target was tens of thousands of times greater than
the period of the wave.
Thus, the side at which the flip-flop stopped
was not predictable other than by a chance distribution
before'Z
a
l
dT
neSS °‘ *he
mmba
was checked
lowed
r
CS
r
e raalts °f “Veral lhousa"<1
showed onlya chance variation
( CR = .7), with slightly more tar-
gets for side B than side A. A tether randomness chfck was carted
CR o
f
R7
0” d ft
targaS
.
gCnerat
.
ed during the experiment. The
'
ln
!
calcs tlat the distribution between the A and B sides
was well within the range of chance variation, with
slightly mo
targets on side A than side B.
S
D. The logic circuit integrated the information from the tanret
generator and the position indicator and sent a shock to the proper
side if one was needed.
If the position of the animal and the selected
target
side matched,
a
five-second shock was
sent
to the side the
mmal was
in at the initiation of the
trial, and no shock was sent
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The Journal of Parapsychology
to the other side.
If the target and position did not match, no shock
was sent.
Thus, the animal could be shocked only
if he was in the
target side at the start of a trial, and only as long as he remained in
that side.
However, at times the animal might have his body on one
side and his tail on the other, or he might be changing sides, so that
his position was ambiguous.
In such a case both beams or neither
beam would be cut and no target would be chosen. When such a
“mistrial” occurred, no shock would be sent to either side.
This part
of the apparatus provided
safeguards
against
the
possibility
that
mechanical failure, such as a burned-out bulb, might give spurious
results.
It was difficult for an animal to jump into a shock, since he
would have to jump at least twice within the five seconds to land in
the side of the cage that was given a charge.
E. The
shock-control
device
determined
the
intensity
of
the
electric charge given to the animal. The shocking voltage was indi-
vidually adjusted for each animal at each run to give a voltage suffi-
cient to make him move away but not react strongly.
During the
first part of the series the shock grid was charged by alternating cur-
rent
; later, the voltage was supplied by a battery in order to provide
better control of the intensity of the shock.
F. The recording device was a Grass two-channel polygraph, one
channel of which continuously recorded the animal’s position and the
other, his position at the time of the trial as well as whether or not
a shock had been sent to the animal. From this information, the tar-
get chosen could be determined.
The lower channel on the chart was the position indicator.
( See
Figure 2.)
Side A of the cage was recorded at the bottom of the
channel; side B, just above
it. The position of the pen indicated the
animal’s position.
For a move of the pen to count as a change of
position,
it had to go at least
1 cm. past the midline into the opposite
half of the area.
Each minute, the pen automatically centered for the
five-second trial period, and in checking the data this allowed a ma-
chine judgment (rather than a human judgment)
to be made about
what position
the animal was
in
at the
initiation
of the
trial and
whether a jump occurred during the trial period.
The upper channel was a shock indicator. A full-scale deflection
of the pen indicated that the animal had received a shock; a half-
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Repetition of French Experiments with Mice
me
iricu,
‘
!r
e
nia
;
kes a miss’ h is shocked and the shock is recorded on
?.«.“?£e
bjv.“sr
k' of ,hc Kn “ *•
—
4. Hit
: When the animal makes a
hit, there
is no shock and this fact
is recorded
ts—
a“ - - *•-
—
' Snse“o“» Sg~
s
Se,"1,S *h“ “*
™
» ta-riite
,e-
7 ISnm Reh
i0r
-
:
In o
Catf no jumping activity between
trials.
7. Random Behavior:
Results when
the animal jumps from
side
to
side without
an.apparent reason;
i.e., not
in immediate response tosTiock
*
‘ J^
str*a
!
:
Indicates that at the time of the
trial either both light beams reached
the photocell unbroken or that neither reached
it
Thf»
i
i
.he tar*, i„
case, and „„ *£
oT«,e clge
°"
CO
Fig.
2. Facsimiles of two polygraph charts.
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The Journal of Parapsychology
scale deflection indicated no shock.
If the pen deviated toward the
center
line (downward)
it meant that the animal was on
side A
at the beginning of the five-second trial;
if the pen deviated away
from the center line (upward)
it meant that the animal was on side
B. From this information
it could be deduced which side had been
the target.
During a mistrial no
deflections
of the upper pen
oc-
curred, since no target and shock decisions were made. This also al-
lowed a machine judgment as to the occurrence of a mistrial.
Except for the recorder and the testing cage, the equipment was
enclosed in a box surrounded by an inch-thick layer of insulation.
The animal species used
in the experiment were 14 white mice
(Mus musculus Swiss Webster) and 9 jirds (Meriones unguicula-
tus).
They were initially housed in homemade cages; but as work
progressed, they were moved twice into new cages.
They received
as much personal attention by the experimenter as possible and were
frequently handled. A
12-hour light-12-hour dark
cycle was used
except for the first two series, during which a 15-hour light-9-hour
dark cycle was used.
General Procedure
There were six series in the experiment, with 25
trials in each
run.
Since the work was mainly exploratory, there was no preset
length for the series
; they varied from 7 to 41 runs. The breaks be-
tween the series were arbitrarily set by such events as relocation of
equipment and changes
in personnel, but the series were
basically
similar in design.
The experiment was terminated partly by the departures of the
senior authors and partly by the dismantling of the equipment—
decision which was made by someone other than the experimenters
and which
therefore
eliminates
the question
of
optional
stopping.
The scoring of the data was completed during the winter, but the
results were not evaluated at that time. The following spring, when
the authors were again free to resume work on the experiment and
before the results were tabulated, the decision was made to combine
the series into a unit because of the lack of any clear basis for de-
' This animal
is commonly but erroneously referred to as a gerbil. True gerbils
are closely related but different
species.
s
e germis
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