Abstract

RNG-PK experiments have tended to employ the continuous influence of subjects in normal states of consciousness, in contrast with the early PK experiments with dice. Cognitive disturbance, ownership inhibition and lack of transparancy of computer programs might play a role in the lack of reproducibility of RNG-PK experiments. The present pilot experiment was an attempt to circumvent the influence of these possibly disturbing factors by shortening the time-scale of the experiment; an enduring element of surprise consisted in keeping the first half of the runs invisible and keeping the subject unaware of the target direction until the visible half' of the run started. A total of 189 sessions were carried out, each consisting of 30 runs of 100 trials each. Duration of each run was about 5 seconds. This meant that the subject was quite occupied during the 2.5 s of the visible run-half with little time for reflection.

Six hypotheses were formulated before the analysis was started: Two hypotheses turned out to be significant: First, the correlation between the deviations in the visible and invisible runhalves turned out to be negative and significant (r = -0.0252, N = 5670, p=. 028, one-tailed), implying that the visible run-halves balanced to some extent the invisible run-halves. Secondly, the intertrial variance was significantly higher in the visible run-halves than in the invisible runhalves (p=.027, two-tailed).

Exploration of the data concerned the data structure at different time scales: Chronological declines over the whole experiment, effects of the time-of-day, differences between sections of the session and patterns within the visible half of the runs. Starting with the latter, scoring turned out to be positive in the first and in the last part of the visible run-half, with scoring opposite to the target direction in the middle part. This amounted to a U-curve pattern, which turned out to be significant (t=2.79, p=. 005, two-tailed). This scoring pattern, which occurs within 2.5 seconds, might be called an "evoked psychokinetic response" (EPKR).

Structure within the session turned out to be significant with regard to the variance effect: The first 10 and the especially the last 10 runs had higher intertrial variance in the visible runhalves, the opposite was the case in the middle 10 runs. The chi-square between these sections was significant (p=. 007). Moreover, the difference between run-halves with regard to scoring in the target direction revealed a decline over the session, with a significant (p=. 03) chisquare between the three sections of the session. Some dependencies on the time-of-day were found: The U-curve (EPKR-) pattern was significantly present in the morning (p=. 006) and in the afternoon sessions (p=.005), whereas the EPKR-pattern was inverted in the evening sessions. The chi-square between parts of the day was significant (p=. 02). Finally, runs which had been preceded by two runs with target high revealed significantly higher scoring in the visible than in the invisible run-halves (p<.001), whereas those runs which had been preceded by two low runs revealed a significant diference in the oposite direction (p=.025). surprinsigly, this difference in scoring level was accompanied bu positive EPKR-curves in both conditions. In conclusion, the stratagem to avoid cognitive interference appears to have been successful, calling for replication of these findings.