The relationship between latent inhibition and performance at a non-intentional precognition task.

Abstract

Context: Many spontaneous cases of extra-sensory perception (ESP) seem to occur without the conscious intent of the experient to manifest any anomalous phenomena. Indeed, Stanford’s psimediated instrumental response (PMIR) theory, which frames ESP as a goal-oriented function, goes as far as to suggest that such intent may be counterproductive to psi. Objectives: The present study was the latest to build on the successful paradigm developed by Luke and colleagues in testing the non-intentional psi hypothesis and potential covariates of psi task success. This study focused on the ability of latent inhibition - an organism’s cognitive tendency to filter out apparently irrelevant information - to predict an individual’s sensitivity to psi stimuli. Method: Fifty participants completed a two-part auditory discrimination performance measure of latent inhibition, a battery of questionnaires and a 15-trial, binary, forced-choice, non-intentional precognition task. They were then either positively or negatively rewarded via images from subsets which they had pre-rated, seeing more images from their preferred subsets the better they performed at the psi task and vice-versa. Results: Participants scored a mean hit rate of 7.96 (MCE = 7.50), which just failed to reach a statistically significant level, t(48) = 1.62, p = .06, one-tailed, ESr = 0.23. However, latent inhibition was found to be unrelated to participants’ precognitive performance.