Telepathy and Dreams: A Failure to Replicate

Abstract

An attempt was made to replicate the procedures and findings of a previous dream-telepathy study conducted at the Maimonides Dream Laboratory. In that study S had, on each of 8 laboratory sessions, placed the true target in the upper half of his rankings for dream correspondence of 8 potential targets (p = .004). S was restudied for 8 nights in a different laboratory. E signaled an acoustically isolated agent at the onset of S's REM periods to concentrate on a target (magazine illustration) randomly selected from the target pool of 8. S's dreams were collected on awakenings from these REM periods. On the following morning, S was given a duplicate target pool and asked to rank the 8 pictures for their correspondence to his dream reports of the night. Two additional judges were given the same task, working both without and with S's associations to his dreams. Neither S nor the judges were able to exceed chance values in matching targets with nocturnal dream production.

Psychology and anomalous observations: The question of ESP in dreams.

“…The Maimonides pattern of controlled experiment in a sleep laboratory, obviously, is extremely time consuming and expensive, and replication seems to have been attempted so far at only two other sleep laboratories. At the University of Wyoming, two experiments yielded results approximately at mean chance expectation--slightly below in one study (Belvedere & Foulkes, 1971), slightly above in the other (Foulkes et al, 1972). In a replication at the Boston University School of Medicine (Globus, Knapp, Skinner, & Healey, 1968), overall results were not significantly positive, though in this instance encouragement for further exploration was reported.…”

“…One page was devoted to a description of the basic method used in the Maimonides experiments; one paragraph summarized the impressive outcome of 10 of the experiments. The rest of the chapter was devoted mainly to a specific account of the experiment in which psychologist Robert Van de Castle was the subject (the outcome is summarized in Line G of my Table 1) and to the attempted replication at the University of Wyoming (Belvedere & Foulkes, 1971), in which Van de Castle was again the subject. Another page was devoted to another of the Maimonides experiments that was also repeated at the University of Wyoming (Foulkes et al, 1972).…”

Dreams and Other Altered Conscious States

“…Of tlie attempts to replicate the Maimonides experiments in other laboratories, two have been successful (6, 3 l), two have been unsuccessful (1,32), and one has produced equivocal results (5). All five studies represented the investigators' initial attempts to study this phenomenon, and it is difficult to predict what the results would have been had long-range studies been planned.…”

Om drømme, almenpsykologi og psykoterapi

“…Senere undersøgelser, først af Foulkes og hans medarbejdere alene og senere i en stort anlagt studie udført af Foulkes i et samarbejde med Ullmans gruppe, kunne imidlertid entydigt dementere disse resultater. 15 ) Endelig har Foulkes gennemført de mest omfattende og grundige studier, jeg kender til, af børns drømme. Gennem en årraekke har han med jaevne mellemrum haft de samme børn til en uges ophold i søvnlaboratoriet, og systematisk vaekket dem i REM-perioder.…”