New developments in Presentiment Research or The nature of Time1

Human physiology changes in predictable ways in anticipation of and after exposure to emotional visual stimuli. In a series of experiments reported by Radin (1997), it was found that even when stimuli were adequately randomized, so that the upcoming stimuli could not be inferred, that anticipatory responses (as measured by changes in skin conductance) before exposure to emotional pictures were significantly larger than before exposure to calm pictures. In three subsequent experiments, the first and third close replications and the second a conceptual replication of Radin’s studies, Bierman confirmed this so called “presentiment ” or pre-feeling effect. Bierman subsequently decided to see whether these anomalies observed in physiological baseline measurements could also be found in data from studies published previously in the main stream literature. Two datasets were found and reanalyzed. The first dataset was from a study on the speed with which fear arises in animal phobic participants vs. controls by the German group of Hamm. The second study was concerned with the difference in anticipatory responses prior to choosing cards from risky vs. non-risky decks of cards in a gambling task by the US group of Damasio. The combined result showed a significan