MANAGING THE TARGET-POOL BANDWIDTH: POSSIBLE NOISE REDUCTION FOR ANOMALOUS COGNITION EXPERIMENTS

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Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 The Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 58, September 1994 MANAGING THE TARGET POOL BANDWIDTH: POSSIBLE NOISE REDUCTION FOR ANOMALOUS COGNITION EXPERIMENTS BY EDWIN C. MAY, S. JAMES P. SPOTTISWOODE, AND CHRISTINE L. JAMES ABSTRACT: Lantz and colleagues recently reported in the first of two studies that experi- enced receivers from the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory produced significant evidence for anomalous cognition (AC) of static targets but showed little evidence for AC of dynamic targets. This result was surprising: It was directly opposite to the results that were derived from the 1994 Bem and Honorton ganzfeld database. In Lantz et al.'s experiment, the topics of the dynamic targets were virtually unlimited, whereas the topics for the static targets were constrained in content, size of cognitive elements, and range of affect. In a second experiment, they redesigned the target pools to correct this imbalance and ob- served significant improvement of AC functioning. We incorporate these findings into a definition of target-pool bandwidth and propose that the proper selection of bandwidth will lead to a reduction of incorrect information in free-response AC. Effect sizes from forced-choice experiments are much lower than those from free-response studies. For example, in precognition (Honor- ton & Ferrari, 1989) and real-time (Honorton, 1975) forced-choice ex- periments, the effect size (i.e., z/J) is 0.02, whereas in the free-response ganzfeld (Bem & Honorton, 1994), the effect size is 0.159. Even if we consider the ganzfeld response as a "forced-choice" among four alterna- tives, the it effect size, which converts 1-in-n into an effective binary- choice hitting rate (Rosenthal, 1991; Rosenthal & Rubin, 1989), is 0.5123 ? 0.0004 for card guessing and 0.5854 ? 0.0287 for the ganzfeld (t(-2 x106) = 46.2, p = 0). The large t score is probably due to the large number of forced-choice trials (i.e., 2 x 106). Considering that the mean of the forced-choice effect size is 2.56 smaller than that of the ganzfeld, however, there is clearly a meaningful difference. One potential source of noise in forced-choice experiments, particularly when trial-by-trial feedback is given, is memory of the previous trial and knowledge of the complete set of possibilities. For example, suppose a receiver (i.e., par- ticipant, subject) is asked to guess if a particular card from a normal deck of playing cards is red or black. Suppose further that there is some An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 37th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, August 7-10, 1994. Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 304 The Journal of Parapsychology putative information coming either from the card or from the mind of a sender and that the receiver is a "good" imager (i.e., can easily picture a brilliant image of a playing card in his mind). The receiver's task, then, can be reduced to simple signal detection. Yet, if anomalous cognition (AC) 1 is not a robust information-transfer mechanism (and it appears that it is not), the "signal" is easily lost among the vibrant internal im- agery from the memory of all alternative playing cards. The resulting effect sizes, therefore, are reduced. The ganzfeld itself was developed as a somatic-sensory noise reduc- tion procedure (Honorton & Harper, 1974). Honorton argued that by placing a receiver in a sensory-reduced environment, the receiver's reac- tions to the environment would be sharply reduced, encouraging a com- mensurate reduction of noise. On the basis of results from our current work, we argue that a major contributor of noise in any free-response study is cognitive and arises, in part, because of the target-pool design. One result from the ganzfeld experiments suggests that dynamic tar- gets produce stronger results than do static targets (Bem & Honorton, 1994). Lantz, Luke, and May (1994) attempted to replicate this finding in two lengthy experiments in 1992 and 1993. The first of these ex- plored, in a 2 x 2 design, the relationship between sender versus no- sender and static-versus-dynamic target type on the quality of the AC. Because Lantz et al. reported no significant effects or interactions as having been due to the sender condition, we will ignore that aspect of this first experiment. In the second experiment, they conducted all trials without a sender and changed the characteristics of the target pool. This paper describes the insights gained from these two studies, which led both to the concept of target-pool bandwidth, and to a potential way of reducing noise in free-response AC. SUMMARY OF THE FIRST ANOMALOUS COGNITION EXPERIMENT-1992 We begin by summarizing the experiment and pertinent results from a study that was conducted in 1992, the details of which may be found in Lantz et al. (1994). In the experiment, a static-versus-dynamic target condition was included to replicate the findings from the ganzfeld. ]The Cognitive Sciences Laboratory has adopted the term anomalous mental phenomena instead of the more widely known psi. Likewise, we use the terms anomalous cognition and anomalous perturbation for ESP and PK, respectively. We have done so because we believe that these terms are more naturally descriptive of the observables and are neutral in that they do not imply mechanisms. These new terms will be used throughout this paper. Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-0079 R000200100001-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 Managing the Target-Pool Bandwidth 305 Target Pools For the static targets, Lantz et al. used a subset of 50 of our traditional collection of magazine photographs (May et al., 1990). These targets had the following characteristics: Topic homogeneity. The photographs contained outdoor scenes of set- tlements (e.g., villages, towns, cities), water (e.g., coasts, rivers and streams, waterfalls), and topography (e.g., mountains, hills, deserts). Size homogeneity. Target elements are all roughly the same size. That is, there are no size surprises such as an ant in one photograph and the moon in another. Affectivity homogeneity. As much as possible, the targets included ma- terials that invoke neutral affectivity. This pool is perhaps better characterized by what it does not contain. There are no people, animals, transportation devices, or situations in which one would find these items-and no emotionally arousing pic- tures. The dynamic targets, on the other hand, followed lines similar to those from the ganzfeld studies. Lantz et al. digitized and compressed video clips from a variety of popular movies or documentaries. With the exception of cartoons and sexually oriented material, the clips could contain virtually anything. Examples included an indoor motor bike race and a slow panoramic scan of the statues on Easter Island. Almost all of the characteristics of the static target pool were violated. The only common characteristic was thematic homogeneity within any given dy- namic clip; across targets there were no restrictions on content. Data Analysis and Results For each response, a single analyst conducted (in the usual way) a blind ranking of five targets-the intended one and four decoys. The expected mean-chance rank was 3. Effect sizes were computed by: LIC, - (RQ - R?) where Nis the number of rank possibilities (i.e., 5 in our case) and RE and Ro are the expected and observed average ranks, respectively. The p values were computed from z = ES x '\Fn where n is the number of trials. Each receiver participated in 20 trials for each target type, regardless of sender condition. Table I shows the average rank, the effect size, and Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 306 The Journal of Parapsychology its associated p value for the static target condition. We see that the combined data are significant and that two of our most experienced receivers, Receivers 9 and 372, produced independently significant re- sults. TABLE 1 RESULTS FOR STATIC TARGETS-1992 EXPERIMENT ES p value 9 2.40 0.424 .034 131 3.10 -0.071 .653 372 2.40 0.424 .034 389 2.75 0.177 .240 518 2.60 0.283 .119 Totals' 2.65 0.247 3 6.8 x 10 'Totals are post hoc. Table 2 shows the same data for the dynamic target condition. TABLE 2 RESULTS FOR DYNAMIC TARGETS - 1992 EXPERIMENT Receiver ES p value 9 3.00 0.0 00 .500 131 2.50 0.3 54 .057 372 3.40 -0.2 83 .897 389 3.00 0.0 00 .500 518 3.10 -0.0 71 .624 Totals' 3.00 0.0 00 .500 'Totals are post hoc. With the possible exception of Receiver 131, AC on the dynamic targets failed to show any evidence of functioning. The difference be- tween these two target conditions favors the static targets (t(198) = 1.75, P< .08, two-tailed). Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-0079IR000200100001-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 Managing the Target-Pool Bandwidth 307 Hypothesis Formulation and Discussion That static targets are better than dynamic ones is surprising, not only because it fails to support the ganzfeld result, but also because it suggests the opposite. There are a number of possible contributing factors for this outcome. They include statistical artifacts, idiosyncrasies of our re- ceivers compared to the ganzfeld participants, and procedural differ- ences. Another possibility may be that, as in the ganzfeld, participants used a rank-order technique for judging even though only the first-place matches were used for the statistic. Because absolute measures of AC are better than relative measures in process-oriented research, and because the target type inference was based on relative measures, perhaps this accounts for some of the result. A full discussion of these points may be found in Lantz et al. (1994). We propose a different explanation: A fundamental difference be- tween the experiment's dynamic and static target pools is, in itself, a source of noise. The sources of noise in the forced-choice domain are reasonably understood (i.e., memory in conjunction with complete knowledge of the target-pool elements). A new insight for us was another potential source of noise in the free-response domain. To understand this noise source, we must first assume that AC data are weak and difficult to recognize. Target pools that contain a large number of diverse cognitive elements, in conjunction with receivers who believe that this is the case, are a source of noise. Receivers will tend to report any imagined impres- sions, for those impressions might be part of the target. Because AC is assumed to be weak, most of the generated impressions are from the receiver's imagination rather than from the target. Furthermore, it fol- lows that the noise will increase when these impressions cannot be inter- nally edited and must be reported. That is, noise is generated not so much from an active imagination, but imagination coupled with an agreement not to edit the internal experience. Editing our internal experience is something we all do in our daily communication. We rarely report to a friend that our mind momentarily wandered during an interesting discussion. Humans appear to have an ability for multi-processing, but we use situational filters to communicate coherently. So, why would we deny this same ability to participants in AC experiments? In Figure 1, we represent schematically the contributions to the noise produced by memory and the noise produced by not editing imagination. As the number of differentiable cognitive elements in a target pool increases from two (for a binary choice) to nearly infinite (for the uni- verse), we propose that there is a trade-off between noise arising from Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 308 The Journal of Parapsychology memory and noise arising from unedited imagination. For target pools containing fewer elements, the noise contribution from memory (i.e., the curve labeled "Memory" in Figure 1) exceeds impressions arising from edited imagination. Regardless of one's internal fantasies, there is usually a complete protocol restriction on allowable responses. The re- verse is true for target pools that contain a large number of cognitive elements: The contribution to the noise because of unedited imagina- tion exceeds that arising from memory. In this case, protocols usually suggest that receivers report nearly all internal impressions (e.g., in the ganzfeld protocol), and because there will likely be far more of these impressions than there are target elements, the noise is increased. At the same time, because there are a large number of elements, and because it is difficult to remember all possible elements and their factorial com- binations, the contribution to the noise owing to memory is reduced. Differentiable Cognitive Elements in the Target Pool 2 5 0 va c ~'eq Figure 1. Schematic representation of sources of cognitive noise. We represent schematically the combination of these two sources of noise by the U-shaped curve in Figure 1 labeled "Combination.'"Without stretching the schematic nature of this argument, we propose that there may be a target pool that minimizes the two noise contributions simulta- neously. That is, if we can accept some noise from each source, we may be able to prevent either from overwhelming the signal themselves. We suggest that our photograph target pool represents one good example: There are enough differentiable elements to reduce the Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-0079 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 Managing the Target Pool Bandwidth 309 effects of memory, but few enough to allow reasonable editing of inter- nal experiences that arise from imagination. The receivers in our experiments have, over time, learned the natural limitations of the target pool by experience and by instruction. They have become skilled at internal editing and do not report impressions that they know are absent from the overall target pool. Thus, there is less incorrect material in their responses. In the Lantz et al. 1992 experiment, where the dynamic targets could be virtually anything, the receivers were unable to produce significant evidence of AC. They also produced, what is for us, significantly reduced functioning with static targets. We speculate that this drop of function- ing in both target conditions arose because the protocol would not allow the receivers to edit their internal experience. The dynamic targets could consist of anything, and the receivers were blind to the static-ver- sus-dynamic target condition. They were therefore unable to edit their imaginations, even for the static targets. To illustrate this point, suppose that half the target pool was ESP cards and the other half was the ganz- feld dynamic targets but that the receivers were blind to the target con- dition. In any given trial, even though the target is actually the star ESP card, the receiver is inclined to report all internal imagery, whether it be cartoon figures, car races, or sex scenes from movies. This increases the incorrect information over what it would be for a simpler target pool of ESP cards alone. A strong word of caution is in order. Editing of internal experience because of sensory knowledge of the target pool cannot inflate a differ- ential rank-order statistic. It will, however, bias any rating scale toward larger values. This is not a problem if ratings are used in correlational or comparative studies. We define the term target pool bandwidth as the number of differenti- able cognitive elements in the target pool. Forced-choice experiments usually represent small bandwidths, video clips usually represent a large bandwidth, and the magazine photographs represent an intermediate bandwidth. At this time, the definition is qualitative, but we will indicate ways in which it can be made more quantitative. Nonetheless, the target pool bandwidth concept is testable. The following hypotheses formed the basis of Lantz et al.'s second study in 1993: 1. A significant increase of AC will be observed for dynamic targets if the dynamic pool is designed with an intermediate target pool band- width that matches the static pool from the 1992 study. 2. An increase of AC will be observed for static targets because the receivers will be able to edit their internal experience. Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 310 The Journal of Parapsychology SUMMARY OF THE SECOND ANOMALOUS COGNITION EXPERIMENT: 1993 The details of the 1993 study may also be found in Lantz et al. (1994). In that study, they included a static-versus-dynamic target condition to replicate the findings from the ganzfeld, but dropped the sender condi- tion: All trials were conducted without a sender. Target Pools For this experiment, Lantz et al. redesigned both the static and dy- namic targets with the constraint that they all must conform to the topic, size, and affectivity homogeneity of the original static targets. Surpris- ingly enough, they identified a large number of videos that could be edited to produce 50 segments comparable to the static targets: an air- plane ride through Bryce Canyon in Utah or a scanning panoramic view ofYosenrite Falls. They selected a single frame from within each dynamic target video clip, which was characteristic of the entire clip, to act as its static equivalent. Thus, they were able to improve the target pools in two ways: 1. The dynamic pool possessed an intermediate target-pool band- width. 2. The bandwidths of the dynamic and static pools were nearly iden- tical, by design. Data Analysis and Results For each response, a single analyst conducted (in the usual way) a blind ranking of five targets: the intended one and four decoys.. Lantz et al. computed effect sizes in the same way as was done in the 1992 study. Three receivers individually participated in 10 trials for each target type, and a fourth, Receiver 372, participated in 15 trials per target type. Table 3 shows the average rank, the effect size, and its associated p value for the static target condition. We see that the combined data are signifi- cant and that three of the four receivers produced independently signifi- cant results. Lantz et al. observed a significant increase of AC for the static targets in the 1993 experiment compared to that of the 1992 experiment (t(143) = 1.68, p< .047). Three of the four receivers were independently significant, and their results improved from their 1992 effort. Thus, the second hypothesis (i.e., an increase in AC for static targets) was strongly supported. Table 4 shows the same data for the dynamic targets. Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-0079 JR000200100001-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00791 R000200100001-5 Managing the Target-Pool Bandwidth. 311 TABLE 3 RESULTS FOR STATIC TARGETS: 1993 EXPERIMENT Receiver 9 2.20 0.565 .037 372 1.87 0.801 9.7 x 10-4 389 3.10 -0.071 .589 518 1.90 0.778 7.2x103 Totals 2.22 0.550 1.1 x 10-5 TABLE 4 RESULTS FOR DYNAMIC TARGETS: 1993 EXPERIMENT 9 1.70 0.919 1.8x103 372 1.93 0.754 1.8 x 10-3 389 3.00 0.000 .500 518 2.40 0.424 .091 Totals 2.22 0.550 1.1 x 10, Using the rank-order statistics just described, Lantz et al. saw no dif- ference between static and dynamic targets in their 1993 study. The first hypothesis was confirmed: They observed a significant increase of AC with dynamic targets in 1993 from that of.1992 (t(143) = 3.06, p