Childhood Trauma and the Emergence of Precognitive Abilities: A Correlational Study

Adults who experienced severe childhood abuse or neglect performed significantly better on one precognitive remote-viewing task than those with little or no childhood trauma. The finding suggests that dissociative tendencies linked to trauma may contribute to extrasensory perception (ESP) abilities, possibly as an adaptive skill for children in unpredictable environments. Other ESP tasks showed little efficacy or correlation with trauma severity. Post-hoc analysis indicated that neglect was more closely related to ESP skill than abuse, though the difference was not significant because the two often co-occur.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This study addresses the scientific tendency to misattribute the higher levels of belief in extrasensory perception (ESP) of adult survivors of childhood trauma to cognitive errors when they may be a result of actual experience with ESP. Dissociative tendencies may contribute to precognition, which would be an adaptive skill for children living in unpredictable and traumatic environments. This study investigated the correlation between self-reported childhood abuse and neglect and precognitive abilities in 227 adults. The participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, comprising subscales measuring emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and physical and emotional neglect, and completed four online tasks measuring extra-sensory perception (ESP) developed by the Institute of Noetic Science’s IONS Discovery Lab. The ESP scores of participants who experienced severe childhood abuse/neglect were compared to those of participants who experienced little to no childhood abuse/neglect. The severely abused/neglected group performed significantly better on one precognitive task using a protocol for remote viewing (p < .05), but other tasks showed little efficacy or correlation with trauma severity. Post-hoc analysis indicated that ESP skill was related more closely to higher childhood neglect than abuse, but because the two types of abuse are often present concurrently, the difference in level of association was not significant.