Esp Research
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Much research has been conducted looking in to the question of whether or not ESP actually exists, with dream ESP often being focused on in research, where an individual attained information during their sleep which has not come through any of the five recognised senses. Many of the reported cases of —- of ESP has been deen to take to take place whilst the individuals is in some form of an altered state of consciousness and as dreaming is the most easily accesible altered state of consciousness available to researchers many studies have focused on this.
Sherwood and Roe (2003) reviewed many ESP studies which were conducted after the Maimonides dream ESP research programme in relation to the actual Maimonides studies. These studies asserted the identification of correct target material which had been attempted to send telepathically to a sleeping participant (receiver) in the study. The M studies looked to the selection of a target which was randomly selected from a variety of forgets, usually consisting of art prints, with this being given in a sealed envelope to a sender, who wouild attempt to transmit telepathically this image to the receiver once they were identified as attempting REM sleep. The sender would be locked in a sound-proof room to prevent any cheating. When the receiver came out of REM sleeo they were woken and shown 8-12 pictures and asked to identify their rate of confidence in each picture being the correct target. A target in the top half of these ratings was considered a hit, whilst one in the bottom half was a miss.
Although many differing procedural variations were used during the M studies, results generally proved significant. A meta-analysis of 450 M ESP trials found the overall success rate to be 63% with odds of 75million to 1 against achieving such a result by chance (Radin 1997 in Sherwood and Roe, 2003). However, criticisms of the studies have been raised concerned those concerning those who conducted the statistical analyses and the number of which were used, as the analysis was passed between many consultants. Issues were also raised as to the replication of these studies, with published studies looking in detail and being hard to evaluate, with many not being exact replications.
Sherwood and Roe (2003) identified 22 studies conducted since the closure of the Maimonides laborotary, which focused on dream ESP, however, many of these studies looked to clairvoyance and its simpler methodology, which does not require a sender ogf the target information. Although these studies overall appeared to show that target material was identified more frequently than expected by chance with Child et al. (1977) showing two studies to be the most succesful. Problems with these studies were identified though, as with the Maimanda studies, where statistical analyses were not fully reported, with neither any single —- across all the studies and differing outcome measures leading to difficulties in evaluating their overall success.
When looking to build upon previous research it may also be of importance to examine beliefs and experiences of the paranormal which a participant in a study holds, to assess what effect this has on the results. There are many measures which have been devised to look at this which have been assessed by ——-(2001) among which the Australian sleep-Goat Scale (——-) has been found to stand as one of the most prominent and accepted scales in ESP research. The ASGS (Tholbourne, 1980) has been used in a variety of studies in forced choice ESP studies. Here a series of statements relating to an individuals belief in ESP, life after death, possibility of contact with the deceased, precognition, psychokinesis and telepathy are posed being rated by expressing whether the subject believed them to be true, false, or uncertain of the statement. Through analysis of this scale it is then possible to attain the expression of their conviction for or against beliefs in paranormal phenoma. THe term of —— would apply to those expressing high conviction rates , with ——- being those with low conviction rates. Thalbourne looked to examine levels of belief and experience dispalyed through completion of this resource, finding that many individuals are likely to show belif in the paranormal, whereas much less people actually report to having experienced some form of personal phenoma, stating that belief and experience should not be treated as the same thing . Paranormal belief and paranormal experience are often treated interchangeably, and the present study suggests some caution in doing so, in part that the given distributions of each differ so markedly. (—-) Here it may be differentiate between those who claim to have experienced paranormal phenoma and those who believe but have not experienced. The latter may therefore be viewed as more likely to show an increased ability to produce evidence of this in further research, whereas those who have only ——could be assured to do less —- to show an ability in this area.
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