What have we learned from experimental tests of dream ESP?

Approximately two thirds of all reported spontaneous cases of extrasensory perception (ESP) have occurred while the experient was in an altered state of consciousness, particularly while dreaming (Rhine, 1962). Early experimental attempts at the Maimonides sleep laboratory to elicit ESP by monitoring participants and waking them during REM sleep were remarkably successful, with an overall hit rate after 450 trials of 63% (where MCE = 50%), that has odds against chance of 75 million to one (Radin, 1997). Attempts to replicate this promising finding have been limited by the prohibitive costs of maintaining a sleep laboratory and difficulties in recruiting participants for studies that require them to stay overnight. However, some researchers have continued to investigate dream ESP using cheaper and less labour-intensive methods.

In this presentation I will outline some of the methods adopted by teams working post-Maimonides and consider recent reviews of this database (Roe & Sherwood, 2009; Storm, Tressoldi, & Di Risio, 2010) to draw conclusions as to whether an effect has been demonstrated. I will pay particular attention to conceptual and methodological weakness in the approaches taken (cf. Roe, 2009a, 2009b) and make recommendations for future work.

Professor Chris Roe is Professor in psychology and parapsychology at the University of Northampton. He is Research Leader for the Psychology Division and Director of the Centre for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes. He is a Treasurer for the British Psychological Society Transpersonal Psychology Section, Board member of the Parapsychological Association, a Council Member of the Society for Psychical Research and the International Affiliate for England of the Parapsychology Foundation. He edits the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. His research interests are around understanding the nature of anomalous experiences and include research on the psychology of paranormal belief and of deception and the phenomenology of paranormal experience as well as experimental approaches to test claims for extrasensory perception and psychokinesis, particularly where they involve psychological factors. Recent research has been concerned with unconscious measures of psi and predicting performance using a composite personality measure called ‘lability’.