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Exploring the relationship between paranormal belief, the propensity to make the Type I error and the detection of paranormal and weak signals amid visual and auditory noise
Dr. Christine Simmonds-Moore
Liverpool Hope University
Grant nº 169/06
Objectives:Paranormal experiences are often reported against a backdrop of randomness (e.g., reading the tea leaves). These experiences are often considered to reflect a Type I error, or the tendency to see something that is not there (c.f. Brugger, 2001). This project seeks to further explore individual differences in perceiving and detecting stimuliin random noise. It will compare paranormal believers and disbelievers andclusters of schizotypyon the perception anddetection of weak and paranormal stimuli in random visual and auditory noise. This will enable further understanding of how individual differences impact on psi performance and awareness of very weak information in addition to further understanding Type I and Type II errors. Experiences associated with random visual and auditory noise will also be explored qualitatively.
Methods:40 believers and 40 disbelievers in paranormal phenomena will be recruited. Each participant will fill out a battery of psychometric tests, including the Australian Sheep Goat Scale, the Magical Ideation Scale, and a multidimensional measure of Schizotypy (the OLIFE). They willthen take part in a computerized experiment (written in EPRIME 2). The experiment comprises a “sound check” (to ascertain individual differences in hearing thresholds), some relaxation music (to facilitate a relaxed state of mind which may aide the detection of weak and paranormal stimuli), a block of auditory trials and a block of visual trials, which will be counterbalanced across the experiment. Each block contains two weak stimulus trials, one psi trial and one noise (no target) trial (order counter balanced across the experiment). Participants will be asked to make ongoing notes and sketches of their experiences of both types of noise, and press a key on the computer if and when they see or hear something that they can identify amid the noise. They will also be asked to give a confidence rating on their decisions and to repeat the button presses as many times as they see or hear something different amid the noise.
Preliminary Results:The study isin theearly stages of data collection and as such, there are no preliminary results to report at this time.