Testing for telepathy using an immersive virtual environment

Within this paper we report on the use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) as an experimental environment and medium for the study of telepathy. We argue that IVR has a number of advantages over ganzfeld work using static or dynamic stimuli, as well as telepathy studies using physical objects. Our own Telepathy Immersive Virtual Environment (TIVE) uses 3-dimensional computer graphics technology to generate artificial environments that afford real-time interaction and exploration in conjunction with head mounted displays (HMDs), sound, and instrumented data gloves that allow participants to interact with virtual objects. Here we report the results of a test of telepathic communication using TIVE. A total of 200 participants (88 males, 112 females, M age = 28.9, range 16-64 yrs, SD = 9.13) were tested in pairs, once as a sender and once as a receiver. This study did not find support for the psi hypothesis, either in terms of directional hitting or in a post hoc magnitude analysis, in which the outcomes were no different from what would be expected by chance. Suggestions for this outcome are discussed along with suggestions for further work.