The Parapsychological Association

At the PA conference, Rebecca O’Connell from Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK will present her research entitled: “Are people conscious of scopaesthesia? Do the number of starers and the introduction of acoustathesia affect hit rates? A pilot investigation.” O’Connell explores scopaethesia: the sense that someone is staring at you; and acoustathesia: the idea that people are able to sense when they are being spoken about. This research links previous studies about the sense that you are being stared at with the sense that you are being spoken about. O’Connell will discuss the evolutionary advantages to this human skill and the correlations regarding the depth and strength of each experience. With 20 participants in total, this experiment used a one-way mirror, and during the stare trials, every time the participant was a subject to the gaze of the starers, their name was repeated over. Conversely, when they were not being stared at, their name was not repeated. Follow-up included the Participant Experimenter Questionnaire, assessing mood and confidence, amongst other things. How did the participants react to a group of starers saying their name in front of a one-way mirror? All will be revealed at the PA conference. Reserve your space now - registration closes on July 27th!

Not yet a member of the PA? Join today and get immediate electronic access to the latest issue of the Journal of Parapsychology as well as other benefits including Mindfield: The Bulletin of the Parapsychological Association, discounts at annual PA conventions and online access to an electronic archive of selected convention papers and videos.

Journal of Parapsychology Volume 82
Number 1 Spring 2018

EDITORIAL
Keeping Up Is Hard to Do
Etzel Cardeña

ARTICLES
A Test of Reward Contingent Recall
David J. Vernon

Belief in the Paranormal: A State, or a Trait?
Harvey J. Irwin, Anthony D. G. Marks, and Christian Geiser

Creation and Validation of the Belief in the Supernatural Scale
Malcolm B. Schofield, Ian S. Baker, Paul Staples, and David Sheffield

Open Data in Parapsychology: Introducing Psi Open Data
Adrian Ryan

BOOK REVIEWS
Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (2nd ed.)
By Etzel Cardeña, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner (Eds.)
Chris A. Roe

Reincarnation in America: An Esoteric History
By Lee Irwin
James G. Matlock

Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife
By Leslie Kean
Etzel Cardeña

ΑΓΓΕΛΟΣ ΤΑΝΑΓΡΑΣ: ΤΟ ΧΑΜΕΝΟ ΗΜΕΡΟΛΟΓΙΟ [Angelo Tanagras:
The Lost Diary].
Research and comments by Nikolaos Koumartzis.
Mario Varvoglis

CORRESPONDENCE
Marco Zdrenka

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Are there reasons why psi experiments are difficult to reproduce? Or is a trickster at work, cleverly masking or obscuring the results? Dean Radin (Chief Scientist, Institute of Noetic Sciences) explored these questions in data collected in two psi tasks launched online in 2000. As of October 2017, those tests had accumulated over 100 million trials from an estimated 200,000 individuals. The two tests included an ESP card test and a simple, forced-choice remote viewing test. While the data in these tests did not show a significant overall hit rate when calculated in the ordinary way, Radin predicted and found highly significant sequential patterns in the data that were not due to optional stopping or to other mundane explanations. This suggested that a forced-choice psi test can result in a null effect via direct hit measures, but at the same time it can produce a highly significant effect when examined for certain kinds of sequential measures. This implies that sometimes the trickster may be tricked into revealing its methods.

Learn more about the current developments in the field of parapsychology by attending the 61st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association. Be sure to book before registration closes on July 27th! 

Experiences with psi are reported more often by people who are self-reported creative and artistic, who have a mental discipline practice, as well as those who have prior psi experience or belief. Additionally, mild isolation (ganzfeld) and induced relaxation techniques have been documented to help people access these experiences—but are these variables reliable in relation to ESP induction? Caroline Watt, Emily Dawson, Alisdair Tullo, Abby Pooley, and Holly Rice at University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, predicted overall high scoring on a ganzfeld precognition task, based on the careful selection of participants with these psi-conducive characteristics. One experimenter, per trial, oversaw the time-stamped collection of data during the study that was designed for simplicity and security; three experimenters oversaw twenty trials each during the entire course of the study. Watt et al. found that moderator variables can optimize the results and be mapped on to common features of spontaneously reported paranormal experiences. Additionally, this was the first study to be submitted to a registration-based meta-analysis, and the review protocol will help to eliminate biases from methodological decisions after the study results are known. It will also allow for the adaptation of data relative to the unique characteristics of a study, thereby encouraging more programmatic research efforts.

Learn more about the current developments in the field of parapsychology by attending the 61st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association. Be sure to book before registration closes on July 27th!