Meta-analysis of free-response studies, 1992–2008: Assessing the noise reduction model in parapsychology.

Storm, Lance; Tressoldi, Patrizio; Risio, Lorenzo Di

doi:10.1037/a0019457

Cited by 116 publications

(188 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Bem (2011) fallows in a line of parapsychological research that extends from the 1930s. In a recent meta-analyses, Storm, Tressoldi and Di Risio (2010) reported a sizable degree of statistical support for ESP for certain classes of experiments. For example, among the 63 studies that used a four-choice procedure, participants responded correctly on a total of 1,326 out of 4,442 trials, a rate of almost 30% (as compared with a 25% baseline).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bayes factor meta-analysis of Bem’s ESP claim

2011

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In recent years, statisticians and psychologists have provided the critique that p-values do not capture the evidence afforded by data and are, consequently, ill suited for analysis in scientific endeavors. The issue is particular salient in the assessment of the recent evidence provided for ESP by Bem (2011) in the mainstream Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, and van der Maas (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 426-432, 2011) have provided an alternative Bayes factor assessment of Bem's data, but their assessment was limited to examining each experiment in isolation. We show here that the variant of the Bayes factor employed by Wagenmakers et al. is inappropriate for making assessments across multiple experiments, and cannot be used to gain an accurate assessment of the total evidence in Bem's data. We develop a meta-analytic Bayes factor that describes how researchers should update their prior beliefs about the odds of hypotheses in light of data across several experiments. We find that the evidence that people can feel the future with neutral and erotic stimuli to be slight, with Bayes factors of 3.23 and 1.57, respectively. There is some evidence, however, for the hypothesis that people can feel the future with emotionally valenced nonerotic stimuli, with a Bayes factor of about 40. Although this value is certainly noteworthy, we believe it is orders of magnitude lower than what is required to overcome appropriate skepticism of ESP.Keywords Statistics . Statistical inference . ESP Bem (2011) has claimed that people can feel or sense salient events in the future that could not otherwise be anticipated. For example, in his Experiment 2, Bem presented participants with two rather ordinary pictures and asked them to indicate which one would be chosen subsequently by a random number generator. If a participant correctly anticipated the random choice, he or she was rewarded with a brief display of a positively valenced picture. Conversely, if a participant incorrectly anticipated the random choice, he or she was punished with a negatively valenced picture. Bem claimed that people could indeed feel these future reward and punishment events and, consequently, were able to anticipate the random choice at a rate deemed statistically above chance. Bem presented a sequence of similar experiments and results and, on this basis, concluded that people can feel the future. This phenomenon and others like it in which people can show seemingly impossible awareness of events are termed psi phenomena, or, more colloquially, extrasensory perception (ESP).If ESP is substantiated, it would be among the most important findings in the history of psychology. The existence of ESP would force us to revise not only our theories of psychology, but also those of biology and physics. In our view, when seemingly implausible claims are made with conventional methods, it provides an ideal moment to reexamine these methods. The conventional approach used by Bem (2011) has two...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bayes factor meta-analysis of Bem’s ESP claim

2011

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“…In a typical ganzfeld study, a “sender” (situated in a shielded room) tries to influence a “receiver” (situated in the “ganzfeld” that is supposed to improve psi perceptions) in order to help him to visualize a target—usually a short movie. The receiver then has to choose between several movies (the target and three decoys), indicating which one was “sent.” This protocol has been replicated dozens of times and has produced significant and controversial results concerning the reliability of the effect observed (Milton and Wiseman, 1999; Bem et al, 2001; Storm and Ertel, 2001, 2002; Wackermann et al, 2008; Storm et al, 2010; Williams, 2011). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retro-priming, priming, and double testing: psi and replication in a testâ€“retest design

Rabeyron

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Numerous experiments have been conducted in recent years on anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect (Bem, 2010), yet more data are needed to understand these processes precisely. For this purpose, we carried out an initial retro-priming study in which the response times of 162 participants were measured (Rabeyron and Watt, 2010). In the current paper, we present the results of a second study in which we selected those participants who demonstrated the strongest retro-priming effect during the first study, in order to see if we could replicate this effect and therefore select high scoring participants. An additional objective was to try to find correlations between psychological characteristics (anomalous experiences, mental health, mental boundaries, trauma, negative life events) and retro-priming results for the high scoring participants. The retro-priming effect was also compared with performance on a classical priming task. Twenty-eight participants returned to the laboratory for this new study. The results, for the whole group, on the retro-priming task, were negative and non-significant (es = −0.25, ns) and the results were significant on the priming task (es = 0.63, p < 0.1). We obtained overall negative effects on retro-priming results for all the sub-groups (students, male, female). Ten participants were found to have positive results on the two retro-priming studies, but no specific psychological variables were found for these participants compared to the others. Several hypotheses are considered in explaining these results, and the author provide some final thoughts concerning psi and replicability.

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“…Based on the assumption that the human brain lacks the capacity to acquire such information, many psychologists and neuroscientists remain unconvinced of the existence of ESP, despite the considerable amount of supporting experimental and anecdotal evidence that has been gathered for it over the past several decades within the field of parapsychology (for recent reviews and discussions, see e.g., Jahn and Dunne, 2011;Krippner and Friedman, 2010b;Powell, 2009;Radin, 2006;Storm et al, 2010;Tressoldi, 2011;. However, it might be reasonable to think that if ESP is similar in any way to ordinary behavioral phenomena such as cognition, volition, and sense perception, then perhaps it too could be associated in some way with the functions of the brain.…”

Section: Esp and The Brainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extrasensory Perception and the Brain Hemispheres: Where Does the Issue Stand Now?

Williams¹

2012

Neuroquantology

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For over a century, evidence has been gathered to indicate that the two cerebral hemispheres of the human brain each tend to have their own behavioral specializations. An issue that has long been of interest to parapsychologists is whether the ostensibly anomalous behavioral phenomenon of "extrasensory perception" (ESP), in which a person seems to obtain veridical information about other people, objects, places, or events beyond the range of the body's sensory-motor system, may be a specialized function of either of the brain hemispheres. To address this issue, a review of parapsychological experiments designed to explore the potential relevance of cerebral lateralization to ESP performance was initially conducted by Broughton in 1983. He generally concluded that, although there was some possible indication of a contribution to ESP by the right hemisphere, the results were mixed and possibly confounded by issues of interpretation. In a more concise review conducted in 2002, Alexander found that a limited number of experiments continued to indicate a right hemispheric tendency, although certain others separately indicated left hemispheric involvement. Thus, the issue is still clearly unresolved. This paper seeks to build upon these two previous reviews by providing an updated and broader review of the various findings obtained in the experiments that have been conducted up to the present time. Although several experiments continue to offer modest support for a right hemispheric contribution, general interpretation of the current database remains hindered by a wide degree of variability in experimental methods and outcomes, potentially confounding factors, and the scarcity of additional clarifying data. Thus, while the issue remains unresolved, there appear to be at least some potential avenues for progress in future experiments.

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Meta-analysis of free-response studies, 1992–2008: Assessing the noise reduction model in parapsychology.

Cited by 116 publications

References 25 publications

A Bayes factor meta-analysis of Bem’s ESP claim

A Bayes factor meta-analysis of Bem’s ESP claim

Retro-priming, priming, and double testing: psi and replication in a testâ€“retest design

Extrasensory Perception and the Brain Hemispheres: Where Does the Issue Stand Now?

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