- A mysterious form of unconscious vision described as
"mindsight" may provide an explanation for "sixth sense"
experiences, it was claimed yesterday.
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- Scientists demonstrated its existence in tests on volunteers
which showed that some could be aware of a scene changing without understanding
why.
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- They simply reported having a "gut feeling"
that a briefly shown photographic image had altered.
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- Ronald Rensink, a Canadian psychologist who led the study,
believes their visual system was able to pick up the change without them
knowing what was altered or where the alteration occurred.
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- "I think this effect explains a lot of the belief
in a sixth sense," he told New Scientist magazine.
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- Dr Rensinkís team at the University of British
Columbia showed 40 people a series of photographic images flickering on
a computer screen. Each image was shown for a quarter of a second and followed
by a brief blank grey screen.
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- Sometimes the image would remain the same, while on other
occasions it would alternate with a subtly different one.
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- When the researchers manipulated the image, about a third
of the volunteers reported "feeling" it had changed.
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- In control trials, where no changes were made, the same
individuals were confident that nothing had been altered.
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- Dr Rensink believes mindsight might be at work when someone
goes into a room and senses something is different, without being able
to define what.
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- "It could well be an alerting system," he said.
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- ©2004 Scotsman.com
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- http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=140492004
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