| Abstract/Results: | ABSTRACT:
Although it is possible for anyone to experience communication from the deceased and this experience has been reported across cultures since antiquity, a medium is someone who has this experience regularly, reliably, and often on-demand. Twenty Windbridge Certified Research Mediums have been screened under controlled laboratory conditions for their abilities to report accurate information about the deceased. They then performed phone readings in which they were given the first names of deceased individuals and asked specific questions about verifiable topics regularly conveyed during naturalistic mediumship readings: the deceased's physical appearance when alive, personality characteristics, hobbies or interests, and cause of death. The participants received no further information about the deceased or their associated living counterparts (sitters) and no feedback during or after the reading. The sitter did not hear or participate in the phone reading; a blinded proxy sitter served in their place. Each medium performed two readings for two different deceased people. Formatted items from the readings were scored for accuracy by the associated sitters. Each blinded sitter scored their own target reading and a decoy reading intended for another sitter. This quintuple-blind protocol addresses potential confounding factors as the source of the reported information: fraud, deception, cold reading, cueing, and overly general information. A previously published study compared the accuracy percentages of blinded target and decoy readings (Beischel, Boccuzzi, Biuso, & Rock, 2015). The sections of target readings including the four specific questions listed above received ratings significantly larger than those sections of decoy readings (52.8% +/- 3.9% vs. 36.6% +/- 3.8%, p = .002, d = 0.75, n = 31). The current project aimed to perform a deep reanalysis of accuracy data broken out by each of the four questions (physical description, personality, hobbies, and cause of death) from readings performed by 12 mediums. Scored readings were received from 21 of the 24 sitters. The means for each question type varied (53.9% +/- 5.2%, 67.0% +/- 7.1%, 49.4% +/- 5.5%, 41.3% +/- 6.5%, respectively) but overlapping interquartile ranges established that no significant differences existed. In addition, the 12 mediums' accuracy data was correlated with their scores on three surveys assessing sensory modality preferences and learning styles: the Index of Learning Styles (ILS), the Barsch Learning Style Inventory (BLSI), and the Learning Channel Preference (LCP). No significant correlations were found between accuracy and ILS Active, Reflective, Sensory, Intuitive, Visual, Verbal, Sequential, or Global scores; BLSI Visual, Auditory, or Tactual Preference scores; or LCP Preferred Visual, Auditory, or Haptic Channel scores. Though this sample size was not large, it may be appropriate to conclude that none of the four types of information requested is more or less difficult to acquire or report during a mediumship reading than any other. Further, individual characteristics categorized as learning styles and sensory modality preferences may not impact mediumistic abilities.
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Reference:
| Beischel, J., & Conboy, L. (2020, September). Correlating mediums' accuracy under quintuple-blind conditions with their sensory modality preferences. Paper presented at The Science of Consciousness (TSC) 2020, Tucson, Arizona. Abstract retrieved from: https://eagle.sbs.arizona.edu/sc/report_poster_detail.php?abs=3797
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