Glossary - ESP-Nexus

A (14)

absorptiontech: A personality trait measured by the Tellegen Absorption Scale reflecting a disposition toward total attentional involvement in sensory or imaginative experiences, and identified as a correlate of psi performance in several experimental studies.
ADCpsi: Abbreviation for after-death communication, denoting spontaneous reported experiences of contact with deceased persons, used as a standard shorthand in the survival research and anomalous experience literature.
after-death communicationpsi: A reported spontaneous experience in which a living person perceives contact, a message, or a presence attributed to a deceased individual, studied in anomalous experience research as a category of potential survival-related phenomena.
altered statespsi: Non-ordinary states of consciousness, such as meditation, dreaming, hypnosis, ganzfeld, or psychedelic states. Researchers often investigate these as conditions that may make psi more likely.
anomalisticstech: A term associated with Marcello Truzzi referring to the interdisciplinary scientific study of anomalous claims and phenomena that fall outside accepted scientific frameworks, emphasizing rigorous but open-minded inquiry.
anomalous cognitionpsi: A term used at SRI and SAIC for ESP-style information transfer, especially in real-world remote-viewing tests. In modern usage it means essentially the same thing as ESP.
apparitionspsi: Perceptual experiences in which a person reports seeing, hearing, or sensing the presence of a human or animal figure that has no known physical cause, studied in parapsychology as a category of anomalous experience distinct from ordinary hallucination.
apportpsi: An object that reportedly materializes inside a sealed space during a sitting. It is historically a seance phenomenon and has rarely been produced under controlled conditions.
arousaltech: A physiological and psychological state of activation or alertness, regulated by the autonomic nervous system and reflected in measures such as heart rate, skin conductance, and cortical activity.
ARVpsi: Associative Remote Viewing, a protocol in which remote viewers describe a target object associated with a future outcome rather than the outcome itself, used especially in applied forecasting contexts.
ASPRtech: The American Society for Psychical Research, founded in the nineteenth century, is one of the oldest organizations dedicated to the scientific investigation of psychical phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, and survival of bodily death.
autoganzfeldpsi: A computer-automated version of the ganzfeld protocol, developed by Honorton in 1983 at Princeton's PRL lab. Automation removed the risk of the experimenter accidentally cueing subjects or biasing judgments.
automatic writingpsi: A practice in which a person produces written text without conscious deliberate control of the hand movements, often studied in parapsychology as a potential channel for unconscious or anomalous information.
autoscopicpsi: Referring to a class of experience, including certain out-of-body states, in which a person perceives a visual image of their own body from an external perspective; in parapsychology and neuroscience the term distinguishes this self-viewing quality from other dissociative or hallucinatory phenomena.

B (4)

Bayes factortech: A ratio that quantifies the relative likelihood of observed data under two competing hypotheses, allowing researchers to express the degree to which evidence supports one model over another on a continuous scale.
Bayesian inferencetech: A statistical framework in which probability represents degree of belief and conclusions are drawn by updating a prior probability with new evidence according to Bayes's theorem to yield a posterior probability.
behaviorismtech: A school of psychology holding that observable actions, rather than internal mental states, form the proper subject matter for scientific study of living organisms.
boundary thinnesstech: A personality construct proposed by Ernest Hartmann referring to the degree of permeability between mental states, self and other, and waking and dreaming experience, with thin boundaries associated with greater reporting of psi and anomalous experiences.

C (8)

channelingpsi: The practice of receiving and passing on information from a non-physical source. It overlaps with mediumship but usually refers to non-deceased entities such as spirit guides or ascended masters.
clairvoyancepsi: Apparent ESP of a distant or hidden physical object or event, with no sender involved. The person picks up the information directly, not from another mind.
confirmation biastech: A well-documented cognitive tendency in which individuals preferentially seek, interpret, and remember information that is consistent with their existing beliefs, posing a recognized methodological concern in both parapsychological and mainstream research.
consciousness-collapsepsi: In the von Neumann-Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics, the hypothesis that a conscious observer is necessary to collapse the quantum wave function from a superposition of possibilities into a definite outcome, a framework sometimes cited in theoretical models of psi.
controlled remote viewingpsi: A structured protocol for remote viewing, developed from earlier government-sponsored research programs, in which a trained viewer follows a standardized series of stages to describe a geographically distant or otherwise hidden target.
CORTtech: Cases of the Reincarnation Type, a designation introduced by Ian Stevenson for systematically investigated cases in which a child claims memories, behaviors, or physical marks apparently corresponding to a deceased individual's life.
crisis apparitionpsi: A vision or felt presence of someone at the exact moment of their death or severe distress. The person who sees it typically has no normal way of knowing about the crisis at the time.
CRVpsi: Controlled Remote Viewing, a structured protocol for remote viewing developed from government-sponsored research programs that provides a systematic, stage-based methodology for percipients to describe distant or shielded targets.

D (10)

deathbed visionspsi: Apparitions or visions reported by dying individuals, typically of deceased relatives or religious figures, studied systematically in cross-cultural research as potential evidence bearing on survival of consciousness and the phenomenology of dying.
decline effectpsi: The pattern where a psi effect gets weaker as the same researcher repeats the experiment. It may be due to chance evening out, tighter methods, or something specific to psi.
discarnatepsi: Referring to a mind, personality, or entity that is held to exist without a physical body, a term used in survival research and mediumship studies to describe purported post-mortem personalities or non-embodied intelligences.
dissociationtech: A psychological process in which normally integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception become separated or disconnected, studied in anomalous experience research as a potential mediator of certain psi-related and altered-state phenomena.
distant healingpsi: An attempt to improve someone's health or physiology through intention alone, with the healer physically separated from the recipient. Tested in DMILS experiments and similar studies.
DMILSpsi: Stands for direct mental interaction with living systems. These experiments test whether one person's intention can produce measurable physical changes in another person who is distant and cut off from normal sensory contact.
DOPStech: Division of Perceptual Studies, a research unit at the University of Virginia that investigates empirical evidence bearing on the survival of consciousness, including cases of the reincarnation type, near-death experiences, and deathbed visions.
dowsingpsi: Using a rod or pendulum to reportedly locate water, minerals, or hidden objects. Most researchers explain it through small unconscious muscle movements; a psi explanation remains contested.
dream ESPpsi: A category of parapsychological research investigating whether information about a distant target can be acquired and recalled during the dream state, classically studied in laboratory settings using a sleeping percipient and an awake agent.
dream telepathypsi: Apparent telepathic transfer of information into a person's dreams. The Maimonides Dream Lab ran the most systematic studies of this from 1962 to 1979.

E (10)

ectoplasmpsi: A substance reportedly produced by physical mediums in late-19th and early-20th century seances, described as anything from vapor to gauze-like material. Most documented cases were exposed as fraud, and the term is mainly of historical interest.
EEGpsi: Stands for electroencephalography: recording the brain's electrical activity from sensors on the scalp. In psi research, EEG is used to look for brain responses that match distant stimulus events.
effect sizepsi: A standardized measure of how strong an experimental result is, separate from how many subjects were tested. Psi research typically finds small but persistent effect sizes, usually in the 0.01 to 0.05 range.
electrodermaltech: Relating to electrical properties of the skin, particularly changes in skin conductance caused by sweat gland activity, widely used as a measure of autonomic arousal in psychophysiological research including presentiment and remote staring studies.
electronic voice phenomenapsi: Apparent voices or speech-like sounds attributed to discarnate sources that are discovered on audio recordings, often in the absence of any known acoustic explanation, and studied within instrumental transcommunication research.
ESPpsi: Stands for extrasensory perception: picking up information through means beyond the normal senses. The three main subtypes are telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.
ESP-PKpsi: The classical parapsychological dichotomy distinguishing extrasensory perception, the apparent acquisition of information without known sensory means, from psychokinesis, the apparent influence of mind on physical systems.
experimenter expectancytech: The influence that a researcher's expectations or beliefs about an experiment's outcome can exert on participants' behavior or on data collection and interpretation, also known as the Rosenthal effect in mainstream psychology.
extrasensory perceptionpsi: The purported acquisition of information about external events or objects through means other than the known sensory channels, encompassing phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.
extraversiontech: One of the Big Five personality traits, characterizing a disposition toward sociability, positive affect, and outward orientation, which has been examined as a potential correlate of psi performance in experimental research.

F (3)

fantasy pronenesstech: A trait construct developed by Wilson and Barber describing individuals who spend extensive time in fantasy and imagination and who frequently report vivid, realistic fantasy experiences, examined in parapsychology as a correlate of anomalous experiences.
file drawer problempsi: The worry that null or negative results never get published, making the published record look more positive than it really is. Registered reports and pre-registration help reduce this bias.
first sightpsi: A theoretical model developed by James Carpenter proposing that psi functions as the most fundamental level of psychological engagement with the environment, continuously and unconsciously influencing perception, memory, and behavior before ordinary sensory processing occurs.

G (4)

ganzfeldpsi: An experiment that quiets the senses to test for psi. Subjects wear halved ping-pong balls over their eyes under red light and listen to white noise. The German word means 'whole field.'
GCPpsi: Stands for Global Consciousness Project, an ongoing network run by Roger D. Nelson. It connects random-number generators spread around the world to test whether major collective events create measurable patterns in the data.
geomagnetictech: Pertaining to the magnetic field of the Earth; in parapsychology, geomagnetic variables have been examined as potential correlates of psi performance, notably in work linking local sidereal time and geomagnetic flux to anomalous cognition.
geomagnetic activitytech: Fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field caused by solar wind interactions with the magnetosphere, measured by indices such as the Kp index and investigated in parapsychology as a possible environmental factor influencing psi effect sizes.

H (2)

hardware randomtech: A random number generator that derives its output from a physical process, such as electronic noise or radioactive decay, rather than from a mathematical algorithm.
hauntingspsi: Recurrent anomalous phenomena reported at a specific location, including apparitions, unexplained sounds, and object movements, which are investigated in parapsychology as potentially linked to place-memory, psychokinesis, or other mechanisms.

I (9)

IANDStech: International Association for Near-Death Studies, an organization that supports research, education, and the sharing of information about near-death experiences and related phenomena.
ICRLtech: International Consciousness Research Laboratories, an organization that continued and extended the consciousness and anomalous phenomena research program originally established at Princeton University.
IGPPtech: Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, a Freiburg-based German research institute that investigates borderline areas of psychology including anomalous experiences, parapsychology, and related phenomena.
IMItech: Institut Métapsychique International, a Paris-based research institute founded in the early twentieth century to investigate mediumship, psychical phenomena, and related anomalous experiences using scientific methods.
individual differencestech: In psychological methodology, the study of stable variations among people in traits, abilities, or dispositions that may predict differential responses to experimental conditions, used in parapsychology to identify personality and cognitive correlates of psi performance.
instrumental transcommunicationpsi: A field of inquiry examining alleged communications from discarnate or unknown entities received through electronic devices such as radios, televisions, computers, and audio recorders.
intentionalitytech: In philosophy of mind, a concept associated with Brentano and Searle referring to the property of mental states whereby they are directed toward or about an object, content, or state of affairs, invoked in parapsychology when discussing the role of directed mental intention in psi processes.
investigator biastech: A broad term for any systematic distortion in data collection, analysis, or reporting that stems from an investigator's prior beliefs, motivations, or expectations, recognized as a threat to validity in both parapsychological and conventional research.
ITCpsi: Instrumental Transcommunication, a field of inquiry examining alleged communications from discarnate or unknown entities received through electronic devices such as radios, televisions, computers, and audio recorders.

J (3)

JPpsi: Stands for Journal of Parapsychology. Founded in 1937 by J. B. Rhine, it is the flagship publication of the Rhine Research Center and the Parapsychological Association.
JSEpsi: Stands for Journal of Scientific Exploration. It is the SSE's peer-reviewed publication covering anomalies research.
JSPRpsi: Stands for Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. It is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal published continuously since 1884.

K (3)

Koestler Parapsychology Unitpsi: A research group at the University of Edinburgh, founded in 1985 with a bequest from writer Arthur Koestler. It runs a long-standing academic parapsychology program and has produced more PhDs in the field than any other institution.
KPUtech: Koestler Parapsychology Unit, a research group based at the University of Edinburgh that conducts and promotes scientific investigation of ostensibly paranormal phenomena.
kundalinitech: In Hindu and yogic traditions, a latent energy described as residing at the base of the spine that, when awakened through practice or spontaneously, is said to rise through the body's energy centers and produce profound altered states or transformative experiences.

L (2)

life reviewpsi: A feature reported in near-death experiences in which the experiencer perceives a rapid, panoramic, and often emotionally vivid replay of memories from their life, sometimes described as simultaneous rather than sequential.
lucid dreamingpsi: A state of sleep in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming and may be able to exert some degree of voluntary control over the dream content.

M (13)

macro-PKpsi: Visible psychokinetic effects on physical objects, such as movement, bending, or levitation. Historical seance phenomena and modern metal-bending studies fall into this category.
Maimonides Dream Labpsi: A sleep laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn where Stanley Krippner, Montague Ullman, and Charles Honorton ran the main dream-telepathy experiments from 1962 to 1979.
materializationpsi: In physical mediumship research, the reported phenomenon in which a solid or semi-solid form, sometimes resembling a human figure or body part, allegedly appears in the presence of a medium under séance conditions.
mediumpsi: A person who reportedly receives information from deceased individuals or non-physical sources. See mediumship.
mediumshippsi: The practice of reportedly receiving information from deceased people through a living go-between called a medium. Researchers test it in the lab using blind judging protocols. See also medium.
mental mediumshippsi: A claimed ability in which a person, called a medium, purports to receive and relay information from deceased individuals or other discarnate entities through sensory impressions, visions, or spoken communication.
meta-analysispsi: A statistical method that combines results from many studies to estimate an overall effect. Key parapsychology examples include Honorton and Bem (1994) on ganzfeld and Bösch et al. (2006) on RNG studies.
micro-PKpsi: Psychokinetic effects on systems where outcomes are random by design, such as random-number generators or radioactive decay. The effects are too small to see directly and show up only in statistical analysis. Contrasts with macro-PK.
model of psipsi: A theoretical framework that attempts to explain the mechanisms, conditions, or psychological processes underlying psi phenomena, ranging from information-theoretic and quantum mechanical accounts to psychological and consciousness-based proposals.
moderator analysistech: A statistical technique that examines whether the relationship between two variables changes depending on the level of a third variable, called the moderator; in parapsychology it is used to identify conditions under which psi effects are stronger or weaker.
morphic fieldpsi: The organizing field that Rupert Sheldrake proposes as the mechanism behind morphic resonance. See morphic resonance.
morphic resonancepsi: Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis that systems inherit a kind of collective memory from earlier similar systems through fields he calls formative causation. The idea is controversial and is not accepted in mainstream biology.
mystical experiencetech: A subjective state characterized by a sense of unity, transcendence of ordinary boundaries, noetic quality, and ineffability, as described in William James's tradition and studied empirically in the psychology of religion and anomalous experience research.

N (2)

NDEpsi: Stands for near-death experience. People who come close to, or briefly reach, clinical death often report vivid first-person experiences: a bright light, a life review, an out-of-body feeling, and deep calm.
noeticpsi: Relating to direct inner knowing or insight that goes beyond ordinary thinking. The word is used in transpersonal psychology and by the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS).

O (3)

OBEpsi: Stands for out-of-body experience: the feeling of perceiving the world from a location outside your physical body. Researchers study it both behaviorally and through brain science.
openness to experiencetech: One of the Big Five personality traits, reflecting a tendency toward intellectual curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, and receptivity to novel ideas, and studied in parapsychology as a possible predictor of psi-conducive attitudes and performance.
out-of-body experiencepsi: An experience in which a person perceives their center of awareness as located outside and apart from their physical body, often from an elevated vantage point, studied in parapsychology both as a spontaneous phenomenon and under controlled laboratory conditions.

P (27)

p-valuepsi: A number between 0 and 1 that says how unlikely a result would be if there were no real effect. For example, p = 0.025 means the result would happen by chance about 2-3 times in 100 tries. Anything under 0.05 is usually called statistically significant. Modern practice asks for effect sizes and confidence intervals alongside p-values.
PApsi: Stands for Parapsychological Association, a professional society founded in 1957. It has been affiliated with the AAAS since 1969 and publishes the Journal of Parapsychology.
paradigm shifttech: In Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science, a fundamental transformation in the basic assumptions, concepts, and practices of a scientific field, often invoked in parapsychology to describe the kind of change that widespread acceptance of psi phenomena would require.
past-lifepsi: Relating to a supposed previous incarnation. Past-life recall is the central phenomenon in reincarnation case studies conducted by researchers such as Stevenson and Tucker.
past-life memorypsi: A reported memory of events, places, or persons from a previous lifetime, investigated in parapsychology through a methodology developed by Ian Stevenson involving detailed case collection, independent verification of claimed facts, and assessment of alternative explanations.
PCItech: Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory, a self-report psychometric instrument developed to assess the multidimensional structure of conscious experience, including altered states, and used in parapsychological research to characterize percipient states.
PEARpsi: Stands for Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research. Robert G. Jahn founded the lab at Princeton in 1979. It ran about 28 years of human-machine PK and remote-perception studies before closing in 2007.
physical mediumshippsi: A form of mediumship in which purported paranormal phenomena manifest as observable physical effects, such as materializations, levitations, or unexplained sounds, attributed by proponents to the agency of discarnate entities and historically the subject of controlled laboratory investigations.
PKpsi: Stands for psychokinesis: direct mental influence on physical systems, with nothing in between to explain it. Two kinds: small statistical effects on random-number generators (micro-PK), and visible movement of objects (macro-PK).
PMIRpsi: An acronym for Psi-Mediated Instrumental Response, a theoretical framework developed by Rex Stanford proposing that organisms unconsciously use psi to scan their environment and initiate behaviors that serve their needs without any conscious intent to use psi.
poltergeistpsi: German for 'noisy spirit.' These cases involve spontaneous physical disturbances: objects moving, rapping sounds, and electrical oddities. Modern parapsychology often reframes them as RSPK (recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis).
poltergeist focuspsi: The living person around whom RSPK disturbances cluster, typically a teenager or young adult under emotional stress. Modern parapsychology treats this person, not a spirit, as the source of the activity.
post-hocpsi: Latin for after this. In research, an analysis run after looking at the data, rather than planned in advance. Post-hoc analyses can find real patterns, but they can also fish for any difference that happens to look significant. Pre-registered analyses are the safer alternative.
pre-registrationpsi: A method where researchers commit to their hypothesis and analysis plan in writing before collecting any data. The plan goes to a public registry. Pre-registration prevents fishing through the data for patterns that look significant after the fact, and it is a strong defense against publication bias.
precognitionpsi: Apparent ESP of future events, where information arrives before it could logically be available. One of the three main subtypes of ESP.
presentimentpsi: A measurable body response, such as changes in skin conductance, heart rate, or pupil size, to a stimulus that has not happened yet. Studied in experiments like Bem (2011) and reviewed in Mossbridge meta-analyses.
prior probabilitytech: In Bayesian inference, the probability assigned to a hypothesis before new data are considered, reflecting existing knowledge, theoretical expectations, or subjective judgment about the hypothesis's plausibility.
pseudosciencetech: A set of claims or practices that uses scientific-sounding language but lacks the testable hypotheses, peer review, and replication standards required by genuine science.
psipsi: An umbrella term for apparent transfers of information or influence that cannot be explained by the normal senses. Includes ESP (extrasensory perception) and PK (psychokinesis).
psi-conducivepsi: Describes conditions or states, such as ganzfeld, meditation, or dreaming, that are thought to help psi occur. The opposite is psi-inhibitory.
psi-hittingpsi: A pattern of experimental results in which a participant's responses correspond to target material at a rate significantly above chance expectation, considered the counterpart to psi-missing in parapsychological research.
psi-mediatedpsi: Describing a process, response, or outcome that is held to be influenced or brought about through psi rather than through known sensory, motor, or inferential channels.
psi-missingpsi: Scoring significantly below chance in a psi test. Parapsychologists interpret this as psi working in the wrong direction, as seen in disbelievers in the sheep-goat effect.
psychedelictech: Referring to a class of psychoactive substances, such as psilocybin, LSD, and mescaline, that produce marked alterations in perception, cognition, and sense of self, and that have been studied in consciousness research for their capacity to induce anomalous and mystical experiences.
psychokinesispsi: Direct mental influence on physical systems, with nothing in between to explain it. Synonym for PK. Two kinds: small statistical effects on random-number generators (micro-PK), and visible movement of objects (macro-PK).
psychophysicaltech: Relating to the systematic study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensory or psychological responses they produce, often involving precise measurement of thresholds and response magnitudes.
publication biaspsi: The pattern where journals publish positive results more often than null results, which biases the published literature toward apparent effects. Researchers can correct for it through meta-analytic methods such as funnel plots and fail-safe N, or prevent it through pre-registration.

Q (2)

quantum shot noisepsi: Random fluctuations in an electrical current caused by the discrete nature of electric charge: current is carried by individual electrons or photons, and the count of those carriers in any short time window varies randomly. Quantum shot noise is genuinely unpredictable at the quantum level, which makes it a strong source of randomness for hardware random number generators used in psi research.
quantum-levelpsi: Pertaining to the smallest scale of physical reality, where particles such as electrons and photons behave according to quantum mechanics rather than classical physics. At this scale, outcomes are inherently probabilistic. Some psi theories propose that consciousness may interact with matter at the quantum level, though the proposal is contested.

R (13)

radioactive decaypsi: The spontaneous breakdown of unstable atomic nuclei, releasing particles or energy. Each individual decay event is genuinely random: no known process can predict when a given atom will decay. Radioactive sources are a gold-standard random source for psi research because nothing in physics is known to bias them.
random event generatorpsi: An electronic device that produces sequences of random binary outputs, typically derived from quantum or thermal noise, used in parapsychology to test whether human intention can influence physical random processes.
recurrent spontaneous psychokinesispsi: A pattern of repeated, apparently spontaneous physical disturbances such as object movements, unexplained sounds, or electrical anomalies that occur in a particular location or around a particular individual and are studied as a possible form of unintentional psychokinesis.
REGpsi: Stands for random event generator. This is PEAR's preferred name for the same kind of hardware random-number device used in PK studies.
remote staringpsi: An experimental protocol, associated with researchers such as Marilyn Schlitz and Rupert Sheldrake, that tests whether a person can detect, through unconscious physiological responses, when an unseen observer is staring at them via closed-circuit video.
remote viewingpsi: A protocol for testing clairvoyance, developed at SRI International starting in the 1970s. A viewer tries to describe a target location or object that is geographically or even temporally distant.
reproducibilitytech: The degree to which an experimental finding can be obtained again using the same methods and materials, either by the original researchers or by independent investigators.
researcher degrees of freedomtech: The many implicit or explicit analytic choices available to investigators, such as decisions about data exclusion, variable coding, and stopping rules, which can inflate false-positive rates when exercised without pre-registration.
retrocausationpsi: The idea that an effect can precede its cause, reversing the normal direction of time. Parapsychologists use it to explain presentiment and precognition without requiring a mind-body dualism.
retrocognitionpsi: Apparent ESP of past events that could not be known through ordinary means. It is studied less than precognition and shows up mostly in spontaneous case reports.
RNGpsi: Stands for random number generator. In psi research, this is usually a hardware device that uses quantum noise to produce truly random outputs, used to test for psychokinesis.
RNG experimentspsi: A class of parapsychological studies in which participants attempt to mentally influence the output distribution of a random number generator away from chance expectation, providing a quantitative measure of possible mind-matter interaction.
RSPKpsi: Stands for recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis. The modern way of describing poltergeist cases, where a living person (often a stressed teenager) is the source of the disturbances rather than a spirit.

S (22)

SAICtech: Science Applications International Corporation, a defense contractor that conducted government-sponsored remote viewing research under the Stargate program during the later phases of U.S. military psi research.
samadhipsi: A Sanskrit term for deep meditative absorption. In classical yoga literature, advanced stages of samadhi are sometimes linked to siddhi-class abilities.
schizotypytech: A personality dimension, associated with work by Hans Eysenck and others, describing subclinical traits resembling schizophrenia such as magical ideation and unusual perceptual experiences, and frequently studied as a sheep-goat correlate in parapsychology.
scientismtech: The philosophical position that the methods and standards of the natural sciences are the only valid means of acquiring knowledge, often criticized in consciousness studies for excluding first-person and anomalous data from legitimate inquiry.
selection biastech: A systematic distortion that arises when the sample studied or the data reported are not representative of the broader population or full dataset of interest, potentially inflating or deflating observed effect sizes.
self-transcendencetech: A psychological state in which a person experiences a sense of identity that extends beyond the individual self to encompass others, nature, or a larger whole.
semiconductorpsi: A material whose ability to conduct electricity falls between a conductor (like copper) and an insulator (like glass). Silicon is the most common example. Modern random number generators often use semiconductor noise, the electron behavior at silicon junctions, as their source of randomness for psi experiments.
sensory attenuationpsi: Reducing light, sound, and touch to lower background noise during psi testing. Researchers prefer this term over the older, misleading phrase 'sensory deprivation.'
SEOtech: Stands for search engine optimization: techniques that help web pages rank in search engines like Google and Bing. These include title tags, structured data, semantic HTML, and strong content. Citation-rich academic sites often rank well naturally because quality content attracts links.
sheep-goat effectpsi: Schmeidler's finding that people who believe in ESP (sheep) score above chance, while disbelievers (goats) score below. The effect has been replicated in meta-analyses across several decades.
siddhipsi: A Sanskrit term for paranormal abilities said to arise from advanced yogic practice. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras list classic siddhis including precognition, telepathy, and effects resembling macro-PK.
spiritualismpsi: A religious movement that peaked roughly between 1850 and 1920, centered on communicating with the dead. It is the key historical backdrop for early psychical research and the seance-room evidence base.
SPRpsi: Stands for Society for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882. It is the oldest scientific organization devoted to studying psi and publishes the JSPR.
SRItech: Stanford Research Institute, a California-based independent research organization where early government-funded remote viewing research was conducted during the 1970s and 1980s.
SSEpsi: Stands for Society for Scientific Exploration, founded in 1982. It provides a peer-reviewed venue for fringe science topics, including parapsychology, and publishes the JSE.
statistical artifactpsi: A pattern that looks like a real effect but is actually caused by how the data was collected, processed, or analyzed. For example, if a measuring device drifts over time, the readings may show a trend that has nothing to do with what was being measured.
statistical significancepsi: A result is statistically significant when it is unlikely to have happened by chance alone, usually at p less than 0.05. On its own, this is weaker evidence than a combination of effect size and successful replication.
statistical weightingpsi: Some studies are bigger or better-designed than others. Statistical weighting gives those higher-quality studies more importance when their results are combined in a meta-analysis. A 1,000-person study counts for more than a 30-person study. Different weighting choices can change which conclusions are well-supported.
Stouffer Ztech: A method for combining independent standard normal scores across multiple studies by summing them and dividing by the square root of the number of studies, used in meta-analysis to produce an overall significance estimate.
super-psi hypothesispsi: A skeptical alternative to the survival hypothesis: evidence that seems to suggest life after death is instead explained as living-agent psi pushed beyond its normal limits. Philosopher Stephen Braude is its strongest defender.
survival hypothesispsi: The claim that some part of a person's personality continues after biological death. Researchers test it through mediumship, reincarnation cases, and NDEs. It is contrasted with the super-psi alternative.
synchronicitypsi: Carl Jung's term for a meaningful coincidence, where two events are connected by significance rather than cause and effect. The concept is hard to test empirically but has been influential in parapsychology.

T (7)

telepathypsi: Apparent ESP between two minds. It is traditionally distinguished from clairvoyance by having a sender who holds the target information.
thermal noisepsi: Random electrical fluctuations in a circuit caused by the random motion of electrons due to heat. The fluctuations are unpredictable at the level of individual events, which is why some random number generators use thermal noise as their source of randomness. It is the opposite of a deterministic clock signal.
trancepsi: An altered state of consciousness characterized by reduced responsiveness to external stimuli and narrowed attention, sometimes reported by mediums and healers as a condition facilitating anomalous information reception.
transliminalitytech: A trait variable proposed by Michael Thalbourne referring to the tendency for psychological material to cross the threshold between conscious and unconscious processing, associated with heightened psi performance and the sheep-goat effect.
transpersonalpsi: A branch of psychology that treats spiritual, mystical, and self-transcendent experiences as valid subjects of study. It overlaps with parapsychology but is a distinct field.
triple-blindtech: An experimental protocol in which the participant, the experimenter administering the task, and the person scoring or judging the results are all kept unaware of the target or condition assignment, providing a higher level of procedural control than double-blind designs.
true randomtech: A sequence of numbers or events generated by an inherently unpredictable physical process, making the output in principle impossible to forecast, as distinguished from pseudorandom sequences produced by deterministic algorithms.

V (2)

veridicaltech: Corresponding to or accurately reflecting external reality; in parapsychology, a perception, memory, or report is called veridical when its content can be independently verified against facts the percipient had no known normal means of accessing.
veridical perceptionpsi: In near-death experience research, a reported perception of events or objects in the physical environment that occurred while the experiencer was unconscious or clinically dead and that can be independently confirmed, used as evidential support for consciousness surviving bodily incapacitation.

W (1)

within-subjectstech: A research design in which the same participants are tested under all experimental conditions, allowing each person to serve as their own control and reducing variance due to individual differences.

X (1)

xenoglossypsi: Speaking or writing in a language the person has never normally learned. Two subtypes exist: recitative (repeating memorized phrases) and responsive (holding a real conversation). The most-cited cases come from Stevenson's reincarnation research.

Z (1)

z-scorepsi: A number showing how far an observed result sits from what chance would predict, measured in standard deviations. A z-score of 1.96 equals a p-value of roughly 0.05.