Katz’s target materials research builds on decades of parapsychological investigation into what makes targets effective. Earlier researchers identified characteristics associated with stronger psi performance: familiarity with natural environments, movement versus static imagery, surprising or meaningful content, distinctive foreground-background contrast, and realistic rather than abstract presentation. May (2011) noted that high-energy thermodynamic events like nuclear tests “never seemed to fail” as targets. Katz’s photographic background study directly tested whether object-background relationships influence remote viewing outcomes, using controlled experimental conditions with twelve experienced viewers completing 360 trials across three background conditions.¹

Twelve experienced remote viewers each completed 30 open-response, triple-blind trials, producing 360 in-depth transcripts containing 8,460 written descriptors and 1,472 sketches. Investigators created a photographic target pool of complex objects set within the three background conditions. Participants received target feedback via email several days after completing each session, maintaining temporal and informational separation between viewing and feedback. The study employed both traditional sum-of-ranks matching procedures and an exploratory method involving item-by-item scoring by both participants and independent judges.¹

Analysis of the 8,460 written descriptors and 1,472 sketches showed that when normal or unusual backgrounds were present in target photographs, viewers’ individual items and sketches described the target object more frequently than the background elements. This pattern suggests that viewers may naturally focus on the primary object of interest even when contextual information is available in the target material. The finding has implications for understanding what aspects of complex targets viewers perceive and prioritize during sessions.¹

The divergence between scoring methods highlights a fundamental challenge in remote viewing research: the choice of analytical approach can reverse the apparent direction of an experimental effect. Sum-of-ranks matching evaluates overall similarity between a viewer’s complete response and each potential target, then ranks the targets by similarity. Item-by-item scoring evaluates each descriptor and sketch individually for correspondence with target features. The white background condition may have facilitated matching by reducing the number of potential correspondences (fewer background elements to confuse the analysis), while simultaneously reducing the richness of accurate descriptors that item-level scoring could identify. This finding suggests that conclusions about target effectiveness may be method-dependent rather than reflecting a single underlying truth about what makes targets “work.”¹

The study employed an experience-centered, phenomenological approach using snowball sampling to recruit remote viewers with varying levels of training and experience. The survey yielded 122 valid responses. Researchers conducted both quantitative analyses and thematic coding of open-ended responses to identify patterns in how viewers describe their awareness of correctness. The phenomenological approach prioritized viewers’ subjective reports of their internal experience during sessions, treating these first-person accounts as primary data rather than attempting to validate them against external performance metrics.²

The frequency distribution reveals substantial individual variation in how often viewers experience accuracy awareness: 37% occasionally, 42% often, 7% in every session, with 11% reporting no such experience. Most respondents (86%) indicated this awareness developed independently through personal practice, while only 14% attributed it to formal instruction. This suggests that accuracy awareness may emerge as a natural byproduct of accumulated remote viewing experience rather than requiring explicit pedagogical intervention. The finding parallels reports from participants in forced-choice psi experiments who develop confidence judgments about their responses.²

Thematic coding of open-ended responses revealed six primary categories of phenomenological markers that viewers associate with accurate information. Unexpected or surprising information refers to perceptions that violate the viewer’s expectations or seem to arrive from outside their normal thought processes. Persistent or repeating impressions involve the same detail appearing multiple times during a session despite attempts to move past it. Vivid or unusual imagery describes perceptions with exceptional clarity, detail, or strangeness. Suddenness or immediacy captures the experience of information arriving instantaneously rather than through gradual inference. Emotional impact includes strong affective responses accompanying certain perceptions. Instant cognitive downloads describe complete packages of information arriving all at once rather than sequentially. These markers represent viewers’ attempts to articulate subtle internal cues they use to distinguish signal from noise in their sessions.²

The research has particular relevance for applied remote viewing contexts where practitioners must make decisions based on session data. Understanding that background context affects both what viewers perceive and how sessions can be scored allows protocol designers to optimize target selection for specific applications. For instance, if the goal is to maximize the number of accurate descriptors about a primary object, targets with normal or unusual backgrounds may be preferable despite potentially complicating the matching process. Conversely, if the goal is to facilitate clear-cut matching decisions, minimal backgrounds may be advantageous. The sensing accuracy findings suggest that training viewers to recognize and mark their own confidence levels during sessions could provide analysts with additional information for weighing different elements of a response, though this approach would require validation against actual performance data.¹²