Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
December 30, 2022
Patrizio Tressoldi, Lance Storm
12 citations
A review of 11 meta-analyses on anomalous cognition, covering over 80 years of research, indicates that such phenomena appear possible. Effect sizes are larger when studies use non-ordinary or altered states of consciousness (e.g., dreaming, ganzfeld), free-response procedures, or neurophysiological dependent variables. These conditions seem to facilitate a form of cognition not constrained by known biological sensory or brain limits. The findings broaden understanding of the mind-brain relationship and the nature of the human mind.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
August 29, 2023
James Houran, Brian Laythe
4 citations
ChatGPT-3.5-generated narratives of mystical, supernatural, or anomalous entity encounters approximate but do not fully match the phenomenology of real-life accounts. The AI descriptions covered each encounter type, mapped to a Rasch hierarchy of anomalous perceptions, showed below-average scores on the Survey of Strange Events, and referenced at least one recognition pattern of Haunted People Syndrome. Inter-rater reliability was fair, and correlations among narratives were low but generally positive. The findings suggest that prototypical depictions based on popular source material can mimic core features of these experiences, yet they lack the full depth of spontaneous reports.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
April 3, 2023
Julia Mossbridge
4 citations
This review examines 90 years of scientific research on precognition—the ability to predict future events without using known information or the five senses. It distinguishes two forms: mostly unconscious precognition with short lead times, such as presentiment (physiological responses before a future event), and mostly conscious precognition with longer lead times, such as precognitive remote viewing. The article describes the evidence for each type and proposes two potential explanatory models, along with ideas for empirical tests. It underscores basic principles of precognition research and outlines different types of this phenomenon.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
October 18, 2022
Edward F. Kelly
3 citations
The Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT) appears promising because it explains neuroscientific facts, makes testable predictions, and offers a technique for detecting consciousness in non-verbal organisms. However, the theory is fundamentally flawed. Key unresolved conceptual issues concern IIT's concept of "information" and its approach to the "hard problem" of consciousness. Empirical phenomena IIT cannot handle include: dissociative identity disorder with overlapping centers of consciousness in one organism; psychedelic states whose intense phenomenology is not reflected in neuroelectric activity; and near-death experiences during cardiac arrest, where IIT predicts no consciousness is possible. These arguments suggest IIT and its physicalist competitors are untenable, but scientifically and philosophically respectable alternatives exist.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
October 30, 2025
Jos Ten Berge
A fourfold diagram models the feedback loop connecting cultural set and setting, individual set and setting, the drug experience, and its articulation back into culture. Because psychedelic drugs primarily amplify, their use tends to reinforce prior beliefs, making their sociocultural effect conservative. Transformative effects arise not from the drug itself but from impactful articulations of drug experiences in receptive environments. The paper argues that drug studies require minimal knowledge of cultural history.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
October 30, 2025
Jonathan Dinsmore
The scientific study of anomalous experiences sits at the border between religious/spiritual and secular physicalist worldviews, which can lead to biased practices. One such practice is the Abstraction Matching Fallacy, where researchers use known hallucinatory phenomena to explain spiritual experiences based on superficial resemblance, achieved by abstracting away incongruent details. This cherry-picking of data to fit theoretical commitments is arguably antiscientific, as science aims to adapt theory to reality through rigorous, objective data analysis. The paper provides examples and calls for researchers to abandon this problematic practice.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
October 30, 2025
Anastasia Ruban, Michiel van Elk
Psychedelic experiences are shaped by culturally prevalent narratives rather than revealing unmediated insights. Psychedelics operate as non-specific amplifiers that magnify pre-existing beliefs within cultural feedback loops linking cultural set and setting, individual expectations, experience, and its articulation back into culture. This view reinterprets apparent disruptive effects as context-dependent intensifications. The authors identify methodological and ideological obstacles to studying culture in psychedelic science and propose a mixed-methods program including reflexivity, discourse analytics, neurophenomenology, and naturalistic cohort comparisons to operationalize cultural variables. Recognizing culture's constitutive role has ethical and epistemic consequences, including caution regarding metaphysical claims and attention to how psychedelics induce change in clinical settings.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
June 5, 2024
E. Cardeña
This issue honors Stan Krippner and two other pioneers in consciousness studies, Jeanne Achterberg and Ruth-Inge Heinze. Achterberg was a key figure in mind/body medicine, especially the role of imagery in healing. Heinze dedicated herself to the interdisciplinary study of shamanism. Krippner, described as a quintessential liminal figure, made major contributions to research on dreams, anomalous cognition, personal mythology, and other areas of consciousness. The text is a tribute and editorial framing, not an empirical study.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
April 3, 2023
Etzel Cardeña
No Summary
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
May 14, 2022
Robin Wooffitt
Poetic confluence is a spontaneous telepathic phenomenon in everyday conversation where one person's speech relates to another's unspoken thoughts or imagery. This exploratory sociological analysis treats it as a form of social action, drawing on Conversation Analysis principles but applying them to anecdotal accounts rather than recorded interactions. Three interpersonal functions are identified: restoring mutual attention, creating affiliation and emotional connection, and managing threats to social propriety (keeping face). Skeptical explanations are assessed, and the work is framed within existing theories of psi phenomena and metaphor. Suggestions for further research on social interaction and psi are offered.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
October 30, 2025
Jos Ten Berge
This article identifies a recurring discourse in 20th-century Western culture, especially before the 1960s, in which psychedelic drugs are described as revealing a fundamental reality hidden by enculturation. Analyzing several drug accounts, the author argues that this view aligns closely with definitions of primitivist Modernism. This correspondence suggests that drug experiences are more strongly shaped by culture than the usual interpretation of set and setting allows. The author proposes that other cultural set and settings, such as Romanticism, can be identified within Western culture. A companion article discusses implications for drug studies and the concept of set and setting.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
November 27, 2024
Amal Ait Melloul, Karolina Kinnunen, E. Cardeña
People who have distressing near-death experiences (NDEs) often report disturbing feelings, darkness, and frightening images, and afterward face emotional and social difficulties, including negative reactions when they share their experience and heightened emotions. Some distressing NDEs also include positive features, making them hybrid experiences. Future research should focus on these hybrid cases and use mixed methods and more qualitative approaches.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
August 29, 2023
Paul F. Cunningham
Charles Tart's contributions to Transpersonal Psychology are reviewed on his 85th birthday. Six key aspects of his vision are identified: a science of Mind and Spirit, a critical psychology, an empirical non-churchly approach to religion as spiritual psychology, a state-specific science of exceptional human experience, an evidence-enriched science of spirituality grounded in experimental parapsychology, and a psychology of human possibilities that helps individuals overcome obstacles to growth.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
April 3, 2023
Helané Wahbeh, Arnaud Delorme, Dean Radin
A survey of 442 academic professionals found that most believe in some form of afterlife, with confidence in survival and paranormal belief strongly correlated. Women reported higher confidence and belief than men. The most persuasive proposed experiments for testing survival of consciousness were a controlled prospective study of veridical out-of-body perceptions during a near-death experience, a mediumship experiment, and a reincarnation experiment. The least persuasive was survival as computer-based artificial intelligence. The findings suggest that well-designed experiments could influence skeptics' beliefs, though academics hold a wide range of views on the topic.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
May 13, 2022
Gerhard Mayer, Max Fuhrmann
Sleep paralysis is linked to some extraordinary experiences and paranormal beliefs, but not all. An online survey of 380 people who had experienced at least one sleep paralysis episode found a significant correlation between how often sleep paralysis occurred and scores on the Dissociation and External dimensions of a questionnaire about extraordinary experiences. However, no such link was found with other scales measuring paranormal beliefs or absorption. Among the 55% of participants who reported paranormal experiences during sleep paralysis, scores on all three scales were significantly higher. The results suggest two possible types of sleep paralysis experience: one tied to negative emotions and external focus, another to positive emotions and internal perceptions, but this hypothesis needs further testing.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
October 28, 2021
Marjorie Woollacott
No Summary