Electrodermal activity (EDA) - State-of-the-art measurement and techniquesfor parapsychological purposes

In most of the direct mental interactions with living systems (DMILS)/Remot e Staring studies, electrodermal activity (EDA) is the only dependent varia ble. Therefore the quality of EDA recording is crucial. This is the reason why we studied EDA-related literature and contacted some of the leading psy chophysiological labs in Germany to debate critical topics of the EDA measu rement. We also checked the Methods section of all studies using EDA data p ublished from 1995 to 1999 in the leading psychophysiological journals. In addition, we surveyed all DMILS/Remote Staring publications using EDA to fi nd out whether parapsychologists adhere to these standards. In the first pa rt of our paper we outline a current state-of-the-art EDA methodology. We a lso address various technical problems and describe sources for potential a rtifacts. In the second part we compare 24 DMILS/Remote Staring with a samp le of 39 recent psychophysiological studies published in Psychophysiology a nd International Journal of Psychophysiology. The analysis reveals that par apsychologists do not meet the current standards. There is not even one stu dy conducted by parapsychologists which refers to psychophysiology's measur ement standards published in 1981. Therefore, DMILS/Remote Staring data may either contain artifacts, or, on the other hand, may not detect the suppos ed effects. Although there is an ongoing trend of finding irregularities in EDA data of DMILS/Remote Staring experiments that can be related to differ ent intentional conditions, there have not been any efforts to understand t he results of EDA experiments or to address the origin of the irregularitie s in detail.