Citation

One way by which psi might manifest itself is by influencing ongoing cognitive processes. Word association has previously been suggested as a possible vehicle for psi. Two experiments are described which look at the influence of psi on interpretation of homophones (words which are acoustically identical, but can have different meanings). In Experiment 1, no overall psi was evident, although results indicate a potential “experimenter effect” and an apparent “response-bias” effect, in which less-favoured responses tend to elicit more psi-hitting. A potential “stacking-effect” artefact is also considered. Experiment 2 was a replication and extension of Experiment 1, with “true” randomisation techniques. No psi-effects were found, although a marginally significant gender effect was observed. Results are discussed along with potential implications of this approach.