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 psi-mediated 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: A total of 50 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 that 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 [mean chance expectation (MCE) = 7.50], which just failed to reach a statistically significant level, t(48) = 1.62, P = .06, one-tailed, ESr (effect size correlation) = 0.23. However, latent inhibition was found to be unrelated to participants׳ precognitive performance.