The Effects of Meditation and Visualization on the Direct Mental Influence of Random Event Generators

Collesso, T., Forrester, M., & Barušs, I. (2021). The Effects of Meditation and Visualization on the Direct Mental Influence of Random Event Generators. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 35(2), 311–344. https://doi.org/10.31275/20211891

AI Assessment

A two-experiment random event generator study whose significant deviation appears only in the second experiment, where the signal source, the sample, the room, and the procedure all changed at once. Thirty participants in Experiment 1, run without meditation and, through a disclosed programming error, on a computer-based PseudoREG, produced no significant deviation (t(29) = -1.26, p = .22, two-tailed). Thirty participants in Experiment 2, run on the true REG after meditation and visualization exercises, in a redecorated laboratory, with a differently recruited sample, produced a significant deviation in the intended direction (t(29) = 2.66, p = .01, two-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.49), and the two samples differed significantly (t(58) = -2.69, p = .009, two-tailed). The paper discloses the device error, the sampling differences, and possible experimenter effects itself; it does not report a preregistration registry entry.

Provenance

DOI. 10.31275/20211891 · Open access, Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC. Submitted July 3, 2020; accepted January 5, 2021; published June 15, 2021.

Authors. Tayzia Collesso (Department of Psychology, King’s University College, Western University, Canada; the byline notes she is now at the Faculty of Law, Western University), Maria Forrester (Faculty of Science, Western University; now at Mariposa Wellness Canada), and Imants Barušs (Department of Psychology, King’s University College, Western University). The acknowledgments identify Experiment 1 as the first author’s undergraduate honors thesis and Experiment 2 as the second author’s undergraduate independent study project, both supervised by the third author.

Study type. Two-experiment direct mental influence (micro-psychokinesis) study with a random event generator: Experiment 1 served as a control sample and Experiment 2 added meditation and visualization exercises, with the two samples compared between subjects.

Funding. The research was supported by donations from Medical Technology (W. B.) Inc. and internal research grants from King’s University College.

Data availability. The paper contains no data-availability statement.

Source basis. Figures confirmed against the primary article (publisher PDF, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 35(2), 311–344).

What the paper reports

Sixty volunteers, 30 per experiment, each completed 20 runs on Psyleron’s PEAR Classic software, selecting 10 high-intention and 10 low-intention runs in an order of their choice, with the difference between cumulative averages for high-intention and low-intention runs as the dependent measure.¹ In Experiment 1, with no meditation component, the mean difference between high- and low-intention runs was -.083 (SD = .36), and the one-sample t-test against zero was not significant, t(29) = -1.26, p = .22, two-tailed. In Experiment 2, where each participant was guided through a 2- to 3-minute relaxation meditation and a 3- to 5-minute guided imagery exercise and then given visualization suggestions before the runs, the deviation was significant in the intended direction, t(29) = 2.66, p = .01, two-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.49, and the independent-samples comparison between the experiments was also significant, t(58) = -2.69, p = .009, two-tailed (Experiment 1 M = -.08, SD = .36; Experiment 2 M = .15, SD = .31). As a manipulation check, love subscale scores on the second administration of the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory were significantly higher in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1, F(1,58) = 4.31, p = .04, while first-administration scores did not differ, F(1,57) = .21, p = .65. The authors conclude that meditation and visualization techniques “may be beneficial for finding anomalous effects.”

Experiment 2 differed from Experiment 1 in the signal source (the true REG rather than the inadvertently substituted PseudoREG), the recruitment mix, the room environment, and the addition of meditation, visualization, and suggestion procedures, so the between-experiment difference cannot isolate meditation and visualization as the operative factor.

How it was run

• Sixty volunteers (30 per experiment) were recruited from Western University, King’s University College consciousness-related courses, the Psychology 1,000 participant pool, and the community; Experiment 1 had a mean age of 22.9 years (SD = 6.9, range 18–55), and Experiment 2 a mean age of 29.1 years (SD = 10.5, range 19–69), drawn primarily from the community (n = 18), with an “unsystematic effort” to recruit participants, such as natural healers, who believed they had some ability to directly manipulate physical reality.
• Sessions ran in a designated psychology laboratory on the King’s University College campus after ethics approval for research with human subjects; while each participant filled out a demographics and attitudes form, the Beliefs About Consciousness and Reality Questionnaire, and the Expressions of Spirituality Inventory, the Psyleron FieldREG software (5 trials per second, 200 bits per trial) passively registered output from the REG, and the participant then completed the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory about that period.
• Intentional runs used the Psyleron PEAR Classic software, a recreation of the original Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory protocols: 20 runs per participant (10 high-intention and 10 low-intention, in an order of their choice) at 4 trials per second, 50 trials per run, and 1,000 total trials, with the participant’s performance shown in real time as a cumulative deviation graph.
• In Experiment 1, “the PseudoREG, instead of the REG, was inadvertently used with the PEAR Classic REG software” as a result of a programming error, so that experiment’s intentional runs drew on a computer random number generator; Experiment 2 used the REG itself, an electronic device manufactured by Psyleron that produces random binary events from the reverse current across a diode produced by quantum mechanical tunneling.
• Experiment 2 added a 2- to 3-minute relaxation meditation, a 3- to 5-minute guided imagery exercise, and visualization suggestions before the runs (all three scripts are reproduced in the paper’s appendices), plus environmental changes: a potted plant on the desk, woodland-imagery posters, overhead lights switched off, and two desk lamps.
• The authors state that “no control or calibration runs were necessary, nor were any carried out,” because only relative measures and correlations were used; after the runs each participant completed the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory a second time and answered three questions about the experience.

Results, as reported

The paper reports means, standard deviations, t tests, F ratios, correlations, and p values. The only standardized effect size reported is Cohen’s d = 0.49 for the Experiment 2 deviation, and no confidence intervals are reported for any comparison, so none are stated here.

Eleven-dimension audit

Pre-registration

The paper does not report a preregistration registry entry. The seven Experiment 1 hypotheses and three Experiment 2 hypotheses are stated in the paper itself, and the authors write that “adjustments were not made for multiple analyses since the hypotheses were prestated.” The study is internally pre-specified by its own text, not independently registered.

Randomization

The REG was a Psyleron device producing random binary events from the reverse current across a diode generated by quantum mechanical tunneling. In Experiment 1, the PseudoREG, which mimics REG output using a computer’s random number generator, was inadvertently used as the signal source for the intentional runs; the authors disclose this as a programming error and cite Jahn et al. (1987) for the points that the PseudoREG and REG are identical in feedback and protocol and that 29 experimental series with a PseudoREG at the PEAR laboratory produced significant deviations.² No control or calibration runs were carried out: the authors state that “only relative measures and correlations were used in this study,” and add that if direct mental influence occurs, even control and calibration runs would be influenced by the experimenter and anyone aware of them.

Sensory leakage

The outcome is machine output rather than a hidden target, so there is no target information for a participant to perceive in advance; participants received real-time cumulative-deviation feedback on screen as a designed feature of the protocol. The paper does not describe who was present in the room during the intentional runs, and it notes that Experiment 2 “required more direct interaction with the participants beyond the simple instruction given in Experiment 1.” The authors themselves flag the real-time feedback as a limitation, noting that the love-subscale correlations “may be the result of a priming effect caused by the feedback.”

Blinding

The paper describes no blinding procedures. Participants selected the direction of each run themselves, the outcome was machine-recorded, and the dependent measure compares pre-stated intention with device output, but the paper reports no blind analysis and no masking of the experimenters, who in Experiment 2 recited the meditation and visualization scripts directly to participants. The authors raise the possibility of an experimenter effect, report no significant difference in deviation scores between the two Experiment 2 experimenters, F(2,57) = 2.68, p = .08, two-tailed, and note that “it is possible that both contributed equally to the elevated scores.”

Optional stopping

The run structure was fixed in advance: every participant completed a balanced series of 20 runs, 10 high-intention and 10 low-intention, at 50 trials per run and 1,000 total trials. Each experiment enrolled 30 participants. The paper does not report how the sample sizes were determined and does not report a stopping rule for data collection.

Outcome measure

The single overall outcome measure is the difference between cumulative averages for high-intention and low-intention runs, tested against the constant value zero with a two-tailed one-sample t-test. The authors state: “Since the separation of high and low intention runs is the single overall outcome measure, no correction for multiple analyses is required.” The remaining analyses are correlations between that criterion and questionnaire predictors (BACARQ composite scores, ESI scores, PCI subscale scores, and ratings of belief in and connectedness with the REG) plus FieldREG averages, screened through stepwise linear regression.

Effect size

The paper reports Cohen’s d = 0.49 for the Experiment 2 deviation. It reports no standardized effect size for the Experiment 1 test or for the between-experiment comparison. For Experiment 1 the authors report that the change in the love subscale across the two PCI administrations accounted for 15% of the variance in the mean difference between high- and low-intention runs.

Multiple comparisons

Experiment 1 tested seven prestated hypotheses and Experiment 2 three, and all 21 PCI subscales were checked as predictors. The authors state that “adjustments were not made for multiple analyses since the hypotheses were prestated,” that none of the Experiment 1 hypotheses was confirmed at the .05 level, and that post hoc results “need to be interpreted with care, given that the probability of a Type I error increases with the number of analyses that are carried out”; their stated policy is “we simply report what we found for the reader to consider.” For the post hoc education and rationality correlations in Experiment 1 they split the sample into halves as a check, and for the recurrence of the rationality correlation in Experiment 2 they compute a probability of .024 that the same one of 21 PCI scales would again be significant in the same direction. No formal correction is applied anywhere in the paper.

Internal replication

One correlation recurred across both experiments: rationality scores against FieldREG averages, r = -.401 (p = .028, n = 30) in the Experiment 1 post hoc analyses and r(28) = -.38 (p = .04, two-tailed) in Experiment 2. Within Experiment 1, the authors’ split-half check kept that correlation significant in one random half, r(13) = -.81, p < .01, but not in the other, r(13) = .20, p = .47. The Experiment 1 correlation between the change in the love subscale and the criterion, r(27) = .39, p = .04, was not replicated in Experiment 2, r = -.12, p = .55, and the Experiment 2 correlation between second-administration love scores and the criterion ran in the opposite direction, r(28) = -.26, p = .16.

External replication

The protocol recreates the PEAR laboratory REG experiments. The paper cites the PEAR 12-year meta-analysis of 91 operators, which reported significant high-low deviations in the intended direction, z = 3.81, p = 6.99 x 10^-5,³ and frames its meditation manipulation against the report of Radin et al. (2012) that self-identified meditators were better able to influence a two-slit optical device than non-meditators.⁴ The introduction also cites Walach et al. (2020) as an independent replication of a micro-PK experiment. The paper reports no direct replication of its own two-experiment design and proposes future preselection of participants, for example with the Ball Selection Test.

Transparency

The article is open access under CC-BY-NC and reproduces its instruments in appendices: the relaxation meditation script, the visualization exercise script, the visualization suggestions, the demographics and attitudes form, and the post-session experience questions. The acknowledgments name the funding sources and the research assistants and identify the two experiments as undergraduate projects supervised by the third author. The authors disclose the PseudoREG programming error in Experiment 1 and disclose that specific instruction on filling out the PCI was not given to the first half of the Experiment 2 participants. The paper contains no data-availability statement and does not state where the raw REG data reside.

The adversarial record

• The design descends from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program: the PEAR Classic software is a recreation of the original PEAR protocols, and the paper anchors its expectations in the random mechanical cascade experiments (Dunne et al., 1988), the 12-year electronic REG meta-analysis (Jahn et al., 1997), Schmidt’s original REG work (Schmidt, 1971), and the FieldREG group studies (Nelson et al., 1996, 1998).
• The paper itself supplies the main interpretive counterweights: it cites Varvoglis and McCarthy (1986) as a counterpoint on whether positive emotions correspond to directional REG deviations, notes that anomalous effects in such experiments “could also be due to participants’ precognitive abilities to anticipate the output from the REG” rather than influence, and acknowledges that the Experiment 2 deviation “may have been in part or entirely due to the experimenters’ psi-giftedness.”
• Reading against the study: the significant result arrives only in the experiment where the device, the sample, the environment, and the procedure changed simultaneously; Experiment 1’s intentional runs ran on a PseudoREG by error; there is no preregistration registry entry; no control or calibration runs were carried out; the samples were small at 30 per experiment; the Experiment 1 love-change correlation failed to replicate in Experiment 2; and the authors themselves list feedback priming, sampling differences, and experimenter effects as limitations.