New developments in presentiment research or the nature of time

Bierman, Dick J.

http://hdl.handle.net/10284/1899

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Authors

Bierman, Dick J.

Abstract(s)

Human physiology changes in predictable ways in anticipation of and after exposure to emotional visual stimuli. In a series of experiments reported by Radin (1997), it was found that even when stimuli were adequately randomized, so that the upcoming stimuli could not be inferred, that anticipatory responses (as measured by changes in skin conductance) before exposure to emotional pictures were significantly larger than before exposure to calm pictures. In three subsequent expreriments, the first and third close replications and the second a conceptual replication of Radin s studies, Bierman confirmed this so called "presentiment" or pre-feeling effect. Bierman sub-sequently decided to see whether these anomalies observed in physiological baseline measurements could also be found in data from studies published previously in the main stream literature. Two datasets were found and reanalyzed. The first dataset as from a study on the speed with which fear arises in animal phobic participants vs. controls by the German group of Hamm. The second study was concerned with the difference in anticipatory responses prior to choosing cards from risky vs. non-risky decks of cards in a gambling task by the US group of Damasio. The combined result showed a significant anomalous difference similar to the effects found in the original studies by Radin and Bierman. A new development in presentiment research is the measurement of brain images rather than skin conductance preceding the presentation of randomized neutral and emotional stimuli. Preliminary results suggest that the anomaly can be located in the brain. This would allow for more detailed inspection of differences between different types of emotional stimuli like violent and erotic.