The Parapsychological Association Convention 2004 255 REMARKABLE CORRESPONDENCES BETWEEN GANZFELD MENTATION AND TARGET CONTENT PSI OR A COGNITIVE

Remarkable correspondences between Ganzfeld mentation and target content have been reported since the early start of Ganzfeld experiments in parapsychology. These correspondences may be due to some anomalous information transfer (e.g., telepathy) or they may be due to a cognitive illusion on the part of the person who perceives them as remarkable. The present paper presents two studies conducted in order to investigate which of these two possibilities is the more probable. Both studies were based on data collected during the first formal experiment run with a new technique called Digital Ganzfeld (Goulding, Westerlund, Parker & Wackermann, 2001). In this experiment the receiver's mentation was stored as a digital audio file that was synchronized with the target videoclip (as well as with the three decoy clips, as all clips were of exactly the same length). An external judge (JW) then played the mentation file together with the different clips in the set that was used and ranked the different clips according to similarities with the mentation. The main result was close to chance with a direct hit rate of 23 % (Goulding, Westerlund, Parker & Wackermann, 2004). However, at the same time as the judge did this judging, he also tried to discern any correspondences between the mentation and any of the four clips (before knowing which one was the target) that appeared to him to be very remarkable (presented as Study 1 in this paper). A total of 20 remarkable correspondences were collected. Of these, only 6 (30%) wer