RemaRkable coRRespondences between Ganzfeld mentation and taRGet content – a psychical oR psycholoGical effect?

Remarkable correspondences between ganzfeld mentation and target content have been reported since the start of ganzfeld experiments in parapsychology. These correspondences may be due either to some form of anomalous information transfer (e.g., telepathy) or to a cognitive illusion on the part of the perceiver. This paper presents 4 studies conducted in order to investigate which of these two possibilities is the more probable. In Study 1, an external judge in a ganzfeld experiment selected 20 short segments that showed most remarkable correspondences between ganzfeld mentation and film clip content while being blind to whether the chosen film clip had been used as a target or as a decoy. Only 6 of the segments showed correspondences between the mentation and the target, which is close to chance expectation level. In Study 2, 11 students rated the 6 correspondences that were “hits” as being equally as impressive as the 14 that were “misses.” In Studies 3 and 4, the possibility that the 14 correspondences that were “misses” could have been due to a form of “displacement clairvoyance” was shown to be very unlikely. It was concluded that it is possible to obtain what at least some people consider to be very remarkable correspondences between mentation and film content by chance alone. since the very start of ganzfeld experiments in parapsychology, there have been reports of remarkable correspondences between ganzfeld mentation and target content. as an example, consider the receiver’s mentation that was reported by honorton et al. ( 990): “. . . now visual patterns more like a spider web and the color. and then like the form of the veins of a windmill. . . . something like a spider web again. a spider web. a pattern that instead of a spider web it looks like basket weaving” (p. 25). the target for this receiver was a film about a spider weaving its web. the receiver actually said the word “spider” 46 times during the mentation (Rick berger, personal communication, august 997). many parapsychologists have apparently been very impressed by such correspondences. for example, palmer (2003) writes: “because a ganzfeld session comprises only one trial, success cannot be demonstrated statistically study and study 2 presented here were also presented at the 47th annual convention of the parapsychological association (westerlund, parker, dalkvist, & Goulding, 2004). we would like to express our gratitude to Johan Rosenblad, who was one of the judges in study 3. 24 Journal of Parapsychology for a single session, although sometimes the correspondence of the mentation to the target is so close in detail that success is obvious” (p. 54). of course, most parapsychologists have also been aware of the difficulties in interpreting correspondences of this kind. however impressive they may appear, it has been impossible to know what the chances are of such correspondences occurring by random processes. although some accounts of these correspondences have been published, most of them have been spread by hearsay and by informal presentations at pa conferences. one example is a videotape compiled by kathy dalton that shows some of the correspondences between receiver mentation and target content that appeared in the sender-no sender study conducted in edinburgh in 994 (morris, dalton, delanoy, & watt, 995). on this tape, the target video clip is shown at the same time as the mentation of the receiver can be heard. one of the most remarkable excerpts shows a man who is running through a forest; it seems that he is being hunted — at the same time, the receiver says: “trees. people running. fleeing.” suddenly, the man falls down in a deep muddy pool — at the same time, the receiver says: “falling. muddy.” the camera zooms in on the man’s face — at the same time, the receiver says: “blond hair. 70s hairstyle. curly-ish. white face.” all of these utterances appear to describe exactly what is being shown on the film. the next thing that happens in the clip is that the man can no longer keep his head above the surface, so he disappears into the mud — at the same time, the receiver says: “dead man in the water.” Unfortunately, synchronization between the video clip and the tape with the receiver’s mentation was not done automatically. kathy dalton (personal communication, august 997) matched the mentation tape with the video clip according to her memory of the session (in which she was one of the experimenters). in order to resolve this uncertainty, in a series of ganzfeld experiments conducted by parker, persson, and haller (2000), an additional videotape recorder was installed in the laboratory. the sound from the receiver was automatically recorded on the tape in this recorder together with the film clip that was played from the first videotape recorder to the sender. after using this method for 20 ganzfeld sessions, parker was able to compile a 30-min-long tape filled with strikingly good correspondences between the receiver’s mentation and the target clip. one scene, for example, shows a woman running through a forest. at exactly the same moment as the woman falls and hits her face on the ground, the receiver says: “feels like someone is falling; the person’s face is hitting the stony ground.” two of us (Jw and Jd) were very impressed by these compilations of “Greatest hits in the Ganzfeld.” we soon realized, however, that there was considerable variation in how these correspondences were perceived by different persons. some individuals (including both persons with a very skeptical attitude and with a very positive attitude toward psi) were not impressed at all, whereas others (also including both persons with a very 25 Correspondences Between Ganzfeld Mentation and Target Content skeptical attitude and with a very positive attitude toward psi) concluded that this was as close to a “proof” of psi as it was possible to get. of course, we also realized that even if everyone had been extremely impressed by these correspondences, they do not constitute scientific evidence for psi. there are many ways in which this kind of subjective validation could prove invalid, the most obvious being the inability to take into full account all instances in which there were no correspondences between the mentation and the target. so, what is clearly needed is some form of baseline on which the correspondences between the receiver mentation and the target content can be compared. contrary to what many parapsychologists have thought, such a baseline is, in fact, not impossible to establish. the way to do this is to select the most impressive correspondences while in the judgment phase of a ganzfeld session. in this phase, the judge (the receiver or an independent judge) compares the mentation to the four possible film clips. what the judge should do, of course, is to note all the striking correspondences between the mentation and the content of any of the four clips. if such correspondences are signs of telepathy, they should (more often than chance) turn out to be matches between the mentation and the target clip and not between the mentation and any of the decoys. the problem with this method is that in traditional ganzfeld experiments, the mentation is usually recorded only on an ordinary tape recorder, making it difficult to synchronize the mentation with the target clip during the judgment phase and with each of the decoy clips as though the decoy had been the target. fortunately, with the new digital ganzfeld technique recently developed in sweden, the mentation is automatically synchronized with both the target and the three decoys during the judgment phase. this technique has been described in detail elsewhere (Goulding, westerlund, parker, & wackermann, 200 , 2004; parker, 2003), but because all studies reported in the present paper are based on data collected during the first formal digital ganzfeld experiment (Goulding, westerlund, parker, & wackermann 2004), the most important aspects of the system will be described below. The Digital Ganzfeld the digital ganzfeld program consists of two software components, one for running a ganzfeld session and the other for judging it. when running a ganzfeld session, the software first selects one set of four film clips from a library of 25 sets. all film clips are stored digitally on the computer’s hard drive, and all clips are exactly 2 min 3 s long (the last 3 s of each clip shows a blank screen). when the receiver is ready to start, the sender starts playing the clip. at exactly the same moment, the computer starts recording the receiver’s mentation. the receiver’s mentation can be heard in real time by the sender. 26 Journal of Parapsychology the target clip is played seven times, with 0 s being needed for restarting, and after this the recording of the mentation stops. thus, a total of 4 min, 2 s of the receiver’s mentation is stored on a file on the computer’s hard drive. the experimental phase continues with the computer selecting a second set (but not the same as was recently used) and then presenting one film clip from this set seven times to the sender while recording the mentation into a new file. with this procedure, two trials are squeezed into one session, thus making the data collection more economical than when only one session is run in 30 min. it is also reasoned that if the participant were to enter a prolonged psi-conducive state, then the two trials might capitalize on this by producing a double hit. the software for judging the session is primarily designed to be used by someone who is accustomed to it and has a great deal of time available for the judging (one session usually takes -2 hr to judge), but it can also be used by the receiver with some help from an experimenter. a session is judged by first downloading the corresponding mentation file from the university server. the name of the file reveals which set was being used (but of course not which clip was the target). the mentation file is then opened from the judging software, together with the four film clips in the set. the mentation file can then be played together with one or two of the film clips. the receiver’s mentation becomes exactly synchronized with the film clips, so any real-time correspondences that occurred during the experimental phase can be easily identified. the idea is that this should help the judge in deciding which of the four film clips was actually the target. there is also a function for “bookmarking” correspondences. the judge can write down what the receiver said together with information about when it was said and save this as a bookmark. later, by clicking on this bookmark, the judge can again listen to the mentation while watching and hearing the corresponding film clip at the same time. The First Experiment Using Digital Ganzfeld in the first experiment using digital ganzfeld (Goulding, westerlund, parker, & wackermann, 2004), annelie Goulding was the main experimenter and westerlund (Jw) worked as an external judge.the experiment was run in Gothenburg, but the judging was done in stockholm, some 400 km away. a total of 64 receivers produced 28 mentation files. Jw judged all of them, but half of the receivers also made their own judgments. the main analysis was done on the number of direct hits that the external judge produced. this number was almost exactly at chance level (23%). it is worth noting, however, that the receivers themselves produced only 4% direct hits, which is significantly below mean chance expectation (p = .05, two-tailed, exact binomial test). 27 Correspondences Between Ganzfeld Mentation and Target Content