Both Julie Beischel, PhD and Mark Boccuzzi will be presenting at the Society for Scientific Exploration38th Annual Conference taking place June 5-8 in Broomfield Colorado.
Mark will be presenting his current work on customization of psi testing and Julie, who is the invited Banquet Speaker, will be presenting her work from the Windbridge Research Center (both abstracts are below). You can see the complete conference program here.
We hope to see you there!
Julie’s Abstract:
You’re Not Even in There Now: The Consilience of Survival of Consciousness, Body Ownership, and Cellular Turnover Research
The evidence for the non-materialist non-locality of consciousness continues to grow and gain more mainstream attention. This includes both studies demonstrating psi (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and mind-matter interactions) and empirical evidence suggestive of the survival of consciousness after bodily and brain death (or simply: survival). The most evidential survival data come from reports of children with verifiable past life memories, veridical information acquired during near-death experiences involving brain death, and accurate and specific information about the deceased reported by psychic mediums under controlled laboratory conditions. In addition, non-psi-based research in the area of body ownership (the experience that this body is mine) using rubber hand and body swap illusions confirms a tenuous and easily disrupted tether between consciousness and the body throughout physical life. Furthermore, the variable turnover rates of tissues in the living body established using protocols such as the carbon-14 bomb-pulse method demonstrate a discontinuous body and thus an impermanence of the living physical self. These realities are further echoed in the common language used to describe the difference between the body and the self. Prevailing research findings in these areas and their application for new paradigm development will be reviewed and the potential implications for everyday life will be discussed.
Mark’s Abstract:
Looking for Psi in All the Wrong Places: Task Optimization in Psi Research
Experimental parapsychology has developed and rallied around several standardized experimental protocols to test for the existence of psi in the general population: presentiment, ganzfeld, remote viewing, and anomalous retroactive influence. By using these protocols, evidence for psi continues to emerge. However, not every research participant who takes part in these standardized psi tests shows an effect. The consilience of research into differences in individual standardized non-psi test results, biological responses to medications and foods, cognitive and decision-making styles, personality types, chronotypes, and intrinsic and explicit beliefs demonstrates that one-size-fits-all options are rarely useful for humans. And while parapsychologists have made significant advances in understanding the factors that can impact laboratory psi experiments including target optimization, experimenter effects, participant selection, and experimental environment, the common practice continues to involve giving the same tests to all participants regardless of their individual differences. I propose that task optimization, that is, the customization of psi tasks based on the cognitive styles and other factors of the participant, may be an additional relevant factor impacting the results of laboratory psi experiments. A series of studies has been designed examining this issue by developing customized testing activities (games) that meet the needs of participants’ specific fundamental cognitive styles. Psi researchers may be leaving data and evidence on the table by not employing task optimization and this highly targeted approach may capture psi functioning in populations that do not typically perform well on standardized psi tests.
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