RANDOM GENERATORS AND LIVING SYSTEMS AS TARGETS IN RETRO-PK EXPERIMENTS

PK efforts by one subject on two kinds of prerecorded time intervals w ere compared. One kind was provided by the durations of successive bre athing cycles of a human subject. The other kind was computer generate d, with the help of a true random number generator, such as to match t he breathing cycles with regard to average length and variance. After the prerecording of the interval lengths, each interval received a ran dom target assignment, long or short, specifying the direction of the PK effort. An audio feedback had a built-in inversion provision, howev er, so that the subject listened to tones of varying durations with th e goal of always extending the durations of the tones. The subject suc ceeded in this task by purposeful PK missing by means of getting menta lly and physically tense and then desperately attempting to shorten th e tone intervals. With both kinds of intervals 20 sessions were held, each session containing 40 time intervals. The subject could not consc iously distinguish between the two kinds. The PK-effect on the actual breathing intervals was significant with z = 3.17 (p = .00076, one-tai led). The scoring on the other intervals was lower, z = 1.68 (p = 046 one-tailed), but the difference is not statistically significant.