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Debunking the sixth Sense?????

Posted by franwest on 15 Jan 2014 at 02:13 GMT

"Science Daily" has referred to this research as "debunking the sixth sense" and quoted Dr Howe as saying "We were able to show that while observers could reliably sense changes that they could not visually identify, this ability was not due to extrasensory perception or a sixth sense". In these experiments the observer actually saw the objects, albeit very briefly. How does this research therefore relate to "ESP" or the "sixth sense" which reportedly occurs when the object is unseen?

No competing interests declared.

RE: Debunking the sixth Sense?????

PiersHowe replied to franwest on 15 Jan 2014 at 07:12 GMT

The term "sixth sense" is usually taken to mean something along the lines of "A power of perception seemingly independent of the five sense" (American Heritage Dictionary) or "a power of perception beyond the five sense" (Webster's College Dictionary).

In our study, we showed that observers are sometimes able to reliably sense changes that they cannot identify, changes that they (erroneous) believe that they did not see. So from their perspective, the experience was similar to that of a sixth sense, in that they could sense information that they believed that they could not see. We were able to show how this processed worked and debunk the claim that this was due a quasi-magical ability such as the sixth sense. The point is that people can sometimes get the strong impression that they can sense changes that they cannot see. What we showed was that while this sensing ability is indeed real, it has nothing to do with a sixth sense, and can be explained in terms of known visual processes.

No competing interests declared.

RE: RE: Debunking the sixth Sense?????

JonD replied to PiersHowe on 15 Jan 2014 at 11:36 GMT

Given you are now using an experiment not designed to look at ESP to defend a claim that the experiment 'shows ESP is debunked', my question is, how did you rule out the use of 'psi' by participants?

The fact you can say it is explained by known visual processes precludes the need for psi to act, but did you show that psi could not act under these circumstances?

Also, who made the claim that any of this was due to a quasi-magical ability. Showing someone a picture before asking if the person wore earings is not something I have seen in the Parapsychology literature, although I have only read a little of it.

No competing interests declared.

RE: RE: RE: Debunking the sixth Sense?????

PiersHowe replied to JonD on 15 Jan 2014 at 12:01 GMT

Experiment 4 addresses your concerns. In that experiment we utilised changes that minimised changes to the scene statistics. We could no longer find any evidence that observers could detect changes that they could not identify. Had our observers had a true sixth sense then they should have still been able to sense changes that they could not identify, just as they had in Experiment 3. Instead, this data indicates that their sensing ability relied on detecting changes to the scene statistics.

No competing interests declared.

RE: RE: RE: RE: Debunking the sixth Sense?????

JonD replied to PiersHowe on 15 Jan 2014 at 12:27 GMT

This meant that in total on 11.2 of trials where a change occurred observers detected but could not identify the change. This was not significantly more than the 7.6 trials that would have been predicted by a guessing strategy, t(9) = 1.82, p = 0.102.

Given a low sample size, is this not tending towards significance in the direction expected?

Given it is in the direction we would predict, could we suggest a one-tailed p=0.0501 may not be unreasonable. We never would, of course.

No competing interests declared.

RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Debunking the sixth Sense?????

PiersHowe replied to JonD on 15 Jan 2014 at 21:33 GMT

Yes, that is a interesting point, but as you point out the result is not statistically significant so you cannot draw firm conclusions from it.

I think the more important point is that there were far more only sense trials in Experiment 3 than in Experiment 4, t(15.2) = 2.49, p=0.025.

No competing interests declared.