On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:34:11 -0800, Scott O Lilienfeld >Hi All TIPSTERs: I learned yesterday (and it was confirmed this morning) that >Ulric Neisser, often regarded as the father of the cognitive revolution (and >one of my erstwhile departmental colleagues and friends here at Emory), passed >away yesterday morning. Needless to say - whether one agreed with him or not - >Dick was a profoundly creative thinker, a penetrating and challenging >intellect, and a person of enormous integrity. The world of psychology will be >a far less interesting and vibrant place without him.
This is very sad news. I did not know Neisser but was familiar with a lot of his work. However, his first publication came as something of a surprise to me. Here's the ref and abstract: Kahn, S. D., & Neisser, U. (1949). A mechanical scoring technique for testing GESP. Journal of Parapsychology, 13, 177-185. |Abstract |Two series of tests of extrasensory perception were carried out by |means of a procedure permitting results to be checked on an automatic |test-scoring machine. In one series 21 subjects were provided with IBM |answer sheets containing space for 300 trials. On each trial subjects |were to mark one of 5 possible choices in the attempt to duplicate a |marked target sheet which had been locked in a file immediately after |it was prepared. In the second series 63 subjects located 500 miles |away from the target sheet, attempted to duplicate the target by ESP. |In this series, 150 trials were made by each subject. Records were |checked by both machine and hand scoring methods. Positive scoring was |obtained in both series, and the combined results were statistically |significant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights |reserved) Before someone raises the question of whether the above named Neisser is actually "our" Neisser, I would suggest that one read Neisser's entry in the series "A History of Psychology in Autobiography" (DOI: 10.1037/11571-008) which is available as a PsycBook or as a real book on Amazon. I quote a relevant section: |Parapsychology | |Another stimulus to my growing psychological interests was |J. B. Rhine's (1947) book The Reach of the Mind, a survey of |research on extrasensory perception (ESP). The topic was |immediately intriguing and became more so when I made the |acquaintance of S. David Kahn. Kahn, my classmate, had a |sort of personal commitment to the paranormal: His family took |reincarnation seriously and consulted psychics before making |major decisions. It was not long before David and I began to think |about doing some ESP research of our own. To make it official, |we called ourselves The Harvard Society for Parapsychology. | |At that time, most ESP research was based on shuffled decks |of cards. This seemed problematic because it left open the possibility |of errors in recording the scores, perhaps even of outright cheating. |We therefore abandoned cards in favor of the standard IBM |multiple-choice answer sheets (then very familiar) in which the |respondent uses a pencil to blacken one of five spaces in each |row. In our experiments one such answer sheet, filled out with the |aid of a table of random numbers, was hidden away to serve as target. |The subjects, given blank answer sheets and pencils, were asked |to duplicate the target as best they could. Their responses were then |mechanically scored against that target, eliminating the possibility |of error or bias. These experiments produced surprisingly positive |results, and we eventually published them in the Journal of Parapsychology |(Kahn & Neisser, 1949). | |My interest in ESP did not last long. Kahn and I later spent a |summer doing ESP research at the American Society for Psychical |Research in New York, but all our experiments there were failures. |We couldn't even replicate the experiments we had carried out successfully |at Harvard! This was discouraging, and I did not pursue the |paranormal any further. It may be, however, that this early exposure |to an exotic research area did influence me later on. I have long |had, and perhaps still have, a soft spot in my heart for exciting but |unlikely hypotheses. I recommend the rest of Neisser's chapter because it gives one a glimpse of how complex he was as well as how diverse his interests his interests were. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=16122 or send a blank email to leave-16122-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
