Anomalous Cognition (AC)

Anomalous Cognition (AC) is a term used within parapsychology to describe the acquisition of information about a target - an object, image, or event - by means that do not involve recognised sensory channels. The Cognitive Sciences Laboratory Laboratories for Fundamental Research used “free response anomalous cognition” to denote psychic functioning under experimental controls, including remote viewing.¹ Researcher Joseph McMoneagle used the term to define extrasensory perception more broadly.²

Much of the recorded evidence on AC comes from the statistical work of S. James P. Spottiswoode, who compiled databases of free-response trials drawn from multiple laboratories and protocols, including the Ganzfeld procedure and remote viewing. In his original data set of 1,468 trials, Spottiswoode found an overall mean effect size of 0.148, corresponding to a Stouffer’s Z of 5.99 (p=7x10^-9).³ Spottiswoode said that, assuming no unknown systematic bias was present in the data, AC performance appeared strongly dependent on the Local Sidereal Time at which a trial occurred.⁴ He identified a peak in effect size at 13.47 hours local sidereal time in this original data set,⁵ where trials falling within one hour of that peak showed an effect size of 0.507 against 0.148 for the complete set, a 3.42-fold increase.⁶ A separate, independent database of 1,015 trials showed a 450% increase in effect size for trials within one hour of the same 13.5-hour window, which Spottiswoode treated as a confirmation of the effect.⁷ The same 13.47-hour peak was subsequently found in his validation data set.⁸ A Monte Carlo test of 10,000 permutation runs put the probability of this peak occurring by chance at any value of local sidereal time at 0.0014.⁹ According to the source record, the increase in effect size at 13.5 hours local sidereal time is considered likely to be real and replicable across different laboratories, occurring in both the Ganzfeld procedure and remote viewing experiment protocols.¹⁰

Spottiswoode also reported that AC performance shows no evidence of falling off with the distance between receiver and target, even over separations of several thousand kilometres,¹¹ and that long-range tests showed no difference in performance from interposing the earth between receiver and target.¹² Separately, he found in 1993 that AC performance improves during periods when the geomagnetic field is relatively quiescent.¹³ Across his full dataset of 2,879 trials, the overall correlation between the ap Geomagnetic Fluctuations (GMF) index and AC effect size was small, at -0.029 (N=2,879, p=0.06, one-tailed).¹⁴ Restricting the analysis to trials occurring within the 11.2 to 14.8 hour local sidereal time window produced a stronger correlation of -0.192 (N=256, p=0.002), compared to -0.010 outside that window.¹⁵ The maximum magnitude correlation of -0.33 (N=134, p=0.0001) occurred at 12.9 hours local sidereal time, which Spottiswoode noted approximately agreed with the separately observed 13.3-hour peak in effect size.¹⁶ This negative correlation peak was confirmed in both the ganzfeld and remote viewing protocols.¹⁷ Michael Persinger said that he found, in 1988, that anecdotal cases of putative AC occurred on days when geomagnetic fluctuations were significantly lower than on the preceding and following days.¹⁸ Not every researcher replicated this pattern: according to the source record, Erlendur Haraldsson and Loftur Gissurarson did not find an association between high-scoring AC trials and low geomagnetic fluctuations in their 1987 work,¹⁹ and Roger Nelson and Brenda Dunne likewise did not find such an association in their 1986 work.²⁰ Data from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) programme was among the free-response investigations examined, with its effect size and confidence interval falling within the range reported by other studies of this kind.²¹

AC has also been discussed outside the statistical parapsychology literature. In Diana Walsh Pasulka’s account, contact with nonhuman intelligence is described as manifesting variously as anomalous experiences, telepathic communication with aerial objects and beings, or anomalous cognition, the latter defined as knowledge of future events or other knowledge for which there is no conventional explanation.²² James Master said that he considers anomalous cognition to begin at a level beyond the physical world, which he suggested is a quantum level.²³ Pasulka wrote that Master studied the biological hardware of human capabilities for anomalous cognition, in contrast to Tyler D., who studied the material hardware of a supposed crashed alien spacecraft.²⁴