PARAPSYCHOLOGY, BIOLOGY, AND ANPSI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00788R001200060019-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 5, 2003
• Sequence Number: 19
• Content Type: OPEN

Approved For Release 2003/09/09 : CIA-RDP96-00788RQ01200060019-4
organism at some level. Perhaps therefore we should look directly at changes in
psychophsioiogical aspects themselves as indicators of the presence of a psi mes-
sage. By so doing, we may be able to look crudely at the psi information during
relatively early stages of its processing within the organism. Although the data
will lack the richness of experience, they may be more consistent and may addi-
tionally eventually tell us a great deal about the processing elements themselves.
Targ and Puthoff (1974) flashed a strobe in the eyes of a sender and observed
the response of the receiver's occipital EEG. One agent-receiver pair was
selected for more extensive work, on the basis of preliminary success plus the
monochromatic EEG spectrum of the receiver. During Strobe periods, the aver-
age power and peak power of the receiver's alpha rhythms significantly de-
creased, indicating partial alpha blockage to remote visual information. At the
same time, the subject was unable to guess with any accuracy above chance
which periods were strobe periods and which were control.
Tart (1963) found that subjects in a soundproof room showed a faster and
more complex EEG pattern plus more active GSR and plethysmograph responses
when a distant agent was receiving strong shocks than during control times. At
the same time, receivers showed no behavioral evidence of responsiveness to
these distant events, in terms of frequency of key presses made during shock vs.
control times. Kelly and Lenz (1976) employed a similar procedure with a re-
ceiver selected for monochromatic EEG, but without an agent. The receiver re-
laxed, eyes closed, and simply tried to visualize the target area and whether or
not the strobe was on. No attempt was made to guess when the strobe was on or
off. Using a variety of preliminary procedures, they obtained suggestive evi-
dence that the EEG responded differentially to stimulus vs. control conditions +
and that the nature of the response may be dependent upon such parameters as
alpha in a remote identical twin, but the overall results were not significant. The
Research Committee of the A.S.P.R. (1959) found no significant EEG changes
in receivers during times in which agents were being emotionally stimulated.
Loyd (1973) employed an averaged cortical evoked potential as a measure of
responsiveness to the sudden onset of a distant stimulus. An agent was instruc-
ted to send a visual image each time a light flashed. During a run, 60 such
flashes were entered on the EEG record in such a way that the EEG output be-
fore, during, and after the flash onset could be averaged to see if a coherent sig-
nal emerged in response to the onset of the remote stimulus. By visual inspec-
lion, such a cortical response seemed to be present. Lack of a control condition
prevented statistical analysis, however. Millar (1976) repeated this procedure
wing control periods and found no d f. '
ev
n
r o
ce r psi. f n Important variable in
stilt studies is the recording site front which the EEC is taken. The best record
~
.
,
,
me its are well known for various k' ,.t) ~r 7f~ir' Sii t " r">;' 2 ..ice N'sn,1967) found additional ev;d?.-mce that receivers vasomotor activ-
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PARAPSYCHOLOGY, BIOLOGY, AND ANPS1
psi information, we have no a priori reason to assume one site more important
than another. To make evoked potential studies work for psi messages. expiora-
tion of a variety of potential sites would seem to be mandatory before the ef-
fectiveness of evoked potentials as psi responses can be assessed.
Another EEG measure that could be used as an indicator of psi processing is
the contingent negative variation (CNV), a negative shift in cortical potential re-
corded by surface electrodes from the frontal portion of the brain. Also called
the expectancy wave, it is generally regarded as a sign that t _'-e organism is im-
minently expecting some specific form of stimulation to which it must respond.
Levin and Kennedy (1975) employed a reaction-time procedure to see whether
or not the presence of a CNV could serve as evidence for anticipation of a yet-to-
be determined event. Subjects were told to press a key when a green light ap-
peared but not when a red light appeared. Which light appeared was determined
by an R.`NG immediately before the light came on. In a preliminary study, sub-
jects' CNV's showed significantly more evidence of expectancy just before the
RNG selected green, the color to which the subject was to respond, than before
red. A confirmatory study produced chance results, however. This procedure is
very important, nevertheless, because the CNV represents a time-locked, precise
event in central nervous system information processing.
Several other studies have employed psychophy?sioiogical measures other than
the EEG. Tart's GSR and plethysmograph results have already been mentioned.
Dean (1965), using a dream telepathy paradigm, found that active sending on
the part of an agent significantly influenced the abundance of rapid eye move-
ments during dream periods, even on occasions in which the subjects dream de-
scriptions were unrelated to the target.
Beloff. Cowles, and Bate (1970) found no evidence that subjects' galvanic skin
responses (GSR) were affected by mildly emotionally interesting messages sent
by a remote agent. nor did Barron and Mordkoff (1968), Dean (1969), or Sanjar
(1969). Rice (1966) found strong GSR deflections in receivers when the agents
were exposed to startling stimuli, e.g., sudden immersion of feet in cold water,
or hearing a blank cartridge fired. Hettinger (1952) claims that a group of pre-
selected sensitives showed increased GSR activity when agents several miles away
were stimulated or made to exercise, but does not provide sufficient details.
Figar (1959) measured peripheral vasomotor activity with a plethysmograph
and found sonic indication that a receiver's vasomotor activity increased when a
.emote agent performed mental arithmetic. Unfortunately, no real attempt was
made to analyze the data blind, nor was any precise statistical evaluation carried
out. Esser, Etter, and Chamberlain (1967) found some indication that receiver'
vasomotor activity increased when agents attended to sentences or names of
emotional importance to the receivers, as opposed to control sentencosfbut the
authors did not attempt --ny statistical analysis. Dean (e
g Dean
1962
1969;
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'gin 'i crc r5 a ei iargi: nti;ni)er ,f tar'e's, such "! -~
as a the urlttia4u: words to
renthe cs FSou!
i6t
d
'
u
ata are best cvauat
hl
,edfy a specia fn ntnta developed by R. A.
Fiher Carington, 1944). The baseline for chance expectation is determined by
rk nummtr of responses for a word (or other item) when it was nor the target.
'je meth thus requires many test administrations with diverse targets, to pro-
e alarge espanse pool. (Having a large response pool is especially important
pause Carit ton, after years of working with the technique, found that it is
visabie to u narrow categories for scoring a hit. For example, he reports a
abstantiallr hig r -tit ratio when "elm" was scored correct only for the target
'tn' than when elm, along with oak, maple, poplar, etc., were all classed
ether as hits for ny kind of tree.) A problem here is that any particular
aa1ogue of response requencies, such as the one Carington prepared, may be
propriate for subj is drawn from a different population or tested at a
n.ended Responses. Wh :he target is complex, no response is likely to be
Tharapiately ri ht or wrong
, stanCard way o scoring such data is to use blind
!de
h
s w
o score each
response
st may try on ten nights to d
eainst each of the targets. For example, a sub-
,
am about wht
aever target picture an agent
ppened, that night, to select fro
tees (whose scores will be average)
a target pool. Then each of three blind
s presented with a 10 X 10 array. Along
'e top are listed the ten pictures, in ral
?tats. The judge rates (for example
door Oder; down the side are the dream
earl reports for the f us! night correspor
n a scale of 0 to 10 if how well the
to each of the ten pictures. He then
!-tin'es with ratings for each of the subse
e array shows whether the ten correct Large
rferent from the 90 incorrect pairings.
tent nights. Analysis of variance of
response pairings are significantly
An alternative with the same general approach\is to have the blind ;udearcrrIt
,,,
response for how well it matches the various'4 rgets. With ion Possibilities,
would enter into the array 1, 3 , 10 fore h response. Some experi?
raters choose to class all high ranks together, and a' low ranks together, but
:h pooling of scores discards so much information th it seems inadvisable.
imilar ratings or rankings can be used to judge the curacy of "readings"
histories). Good research must be double blind. The rson for whom the
ding is held is absent. The proxy sitter (a blind not aker) asks for the
ding and records it. The best judge of the accuracy of a re ding is ordinarily
absent sitter for whom the sitting was held. Each absents ter is then pre-
ted with the entire set of readings, coded so that he does not k w which was
traded for him, and is asked to rate or to rank them. The exile ' enter puts
se ratings or rankings into an array for analysis of variance: read gs are the
irnnc and `{'."''
- -
scores
I scoring, an alternative to such global ranking or ratin
re
i
h
g
qu
res t
a
n
erintenter put a pair of parentheses after each scorable item in the res
d, for example., itticr
thi is ali;m
{1
has h
about 50 or 55 { j who is going to race air}t of happiness in his future. 'le
some troubles in his past, but things will go better for him soon. He is
very cld
() button
to someone named Anna O. He wears a green ( 'jacket O with brass
"
}.
The subject is asked to respond to each item ~ingiy. so far as
possible, so
should respond
jacket, or button
theses with a check !
Lion mark if it is ambig
.and crosses.) Checks are
reading is entered into the pr
The items on any of these p
set up for each division. Dream
aced separately for responses that
Readings for absent sitters may have
tions of the sitters, references to !ivin
viduals, etc.
'ere or were not associated with color.
nts subdivided for personality descrip-
indi'dduals, references to dead indi-
O,den-ended Responses Scored as Forced Choic A method for retaining both
freedom in the subject's resp unse and also rile sung, -ity of forced-choice scoring
is to use complex material for the target but lake on,, prespecified categories as
the scorable responses. Sciuneidler and Lewis e('96 prepared a set of 81
pictures which showed all combinations of three levels four variables: sex
(tsvo .,tales, two females or one male and one female): age (y g, adult but not
old, old); activity (passive, normal. active); and emotion (u ` appy, neutral,
happy). Subjects were told that each picture showed two poop : they were
asked to describe the picture: and responses were scored for acc-r. ~~y un the
four variables. lionorton (1975) has recently prepared an assembly - 01 24
pictures which permits binary scoring (present or absent) for all cr,mbi ati '-s of
Physiological Measures. When targets are preselected as emotionally neutral or
emotionally charged, the subject's physiological changes can appropriately be
used as the response measure. Tart (1963) applied painful electric shoe- to the
agent on some trials of a GESP experiment and measured subjects' responses by
GSR, EEG, plethysmograph, and key taps (conscious report). Each of the phys-
iological measures showed a significant difference between shock and nonshock
trials, but the key taps did not. Another example is research reported by Dean
(1966), who made use of only a single physiological measure. In his procedure,
the subject lay quietly in a darkened roost. A plethysmograph record showed
changes in his finger's fluid volume (a measure of autonomic activity). The
agent in another room looked at names, randomly ordered, of three types:
persons important to the subject but not to the experimenter; persons irnportarit
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at a woman of 55 who wore a red sweater with a brass clasp
rmativel t thdh b
yoe age an terass, but not to the man, green,
Responses typically consist of entering each pair of paren-
the item is clearly right, a cross if it is wrong, and a ques-
us. (Subjects find this easier than entering only checks
then summed.. and the frequency of checks for each
cols may be sup ivtdcd, and a different array
otocols, for example, may have items evalu-
 r, tnp ,xA,pproved For Release 2003/09/09 : CIA-RDP96-00788 R001200060019-4
tee Su,~ t; and persons known to neither.
"a
d
g
s c or
eu Jr the pleth
ysmokrapn record. Scoring of plethysmograpli
changes was blind. Dean's data, and those of several similar experiments,
showed increasc in autonomic activity when the agent contemplated a name
personally relevant to the subject. Typically, as found by Tart, the subject
reported no awareness of the target.
Other possibilities are obvious but have not as yet been adequately explored.
No controlled research has been published on the wave form of the cortical
evoked potential, e.g., for auditory vs, visual ESP targets. Only preliminary in-
vestigation reports similarity in the timing of alpha waves as the ESP response in
paired subjects.
Selection of Appropriate ESP Targets
The experimenter, obrious,y, need not restrict himself to using ESP cards as
targets. There is an infinite number of possibilities, and for some subjects or
e hypotheses. other target possibilities are preferable to a set of five symbols.
The ge of choice might be suggested by the following list, called from 5 years
of reports in a single journal. The Journal of the American Sociel.' for Psychical
Resecrch;Vn 1970-1974, published ESP research with these targets: cards that
were green bQ one side and white on the other; the inner containers that con-
cealed these cards; ESP cards; multiple-choice questions, each consisting of four
items relevant to'a,story? that the subject had heard: elaborate pictures (usually
art prints or magazihe illustrations); slides of patterns and faces (including the
subject's own face); Homes (including the subject's own name); the sex of a
person in a concealed ph~tpgraph; a particular square within a 5 X 5 matrix; red
vs. black papers; Identi?Kit c mponents to match the face of a target person; a
multisensory environment whic the subject would soon expos once; erotic pic?
tures affixed to some ES? cards the timing of radioactive emissions liom a
Schmid: machine; several sets of f -.nature cards; the 12 positions of a 'clock
face: audio-visual programs of slides altd music; geometric symbols; the five
vowels; a pool of 100 simple line drawirbs of objects, with their names; char-
acteristics of the persons who would sit in' ecified auditorium chairs; word
associates; relevant statements about individuals "concealed photographs;scrics
of thematically related -1-1
Selection of Appropr, to Subjects
Spears. Humans are not necessarily the subjects of choice."T~bough no syste-
matic work has been done in comparative parapsychology, ext chance data
have been reported for such diverse animals as cockroaches, lizar rodents,
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*
t
worker are: (a) to study psi in the species where he is himself most expert at
experimenta schedules list; and (b) to set up the laboratory conditions and reinforce rig
which most sensitively elicit meaningful data m other types
research,
Cats ogs ho se s, and humans. Probably the two best di'ectives f +'
-
~
The three conspicuous virtues of this approach are: (Xi) the subject's goal
during the selection trials is to do well enough for later lei ratory work, acid
thus the later work comes as no surprise to him; (b) the expo 'menter effect is
controlled, since it is the experimenter for whom the subject oduced earlier
high scores who works with him later; and (c) test conditions become Increas-
in,h. -1------
F'eselecriai of Subjects. If the experimenter wants to study the relation of
to some other variable; such as imagery, creativity, extroversion, or psychos;
he may choose to use preselected criterion groups. It may be even more nece
sary in psi than in other research, however, to do careful pretesting to ensur
that such special conditions-as the choice of targets, the setting, or the connot
Lions of the wording of the instructions do not in themselves have a differenti
effect upon the groups.
In the more common case of preselection, the experimenter may choose to u?
gifted subjects. Here he can fail into a trap. The natural way to find gifted su