Techno-Dowsing: Developing a Physiological Response System to Improve Psi Training PAUL STEVENS Koestler Parapsychology Unit, Department of Psychology, 7 George Square, University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ United Kingdom 1 Abstract Ð Working under the assumption that psi results from the detec- tion of a weak energetic signal propagating in space and/or time, physiologi- cal responses from 20 unselected volunteer participants were recorded. An artificial neural network (ANN) was first trained to recognize a variety of recognition responses, then used to predict a precognitive psi target based on participants’ physiological responses to concepts related to the target. Mea- sures taken were peripheral blood flow, electrodermal activity and electro- encephalographic activity. The ANN trained on all participants’ data suc- cessfully reduced the possible target pool from 8 to 2 in 8 out of 20 cases. For individually trained networks, this increased to 11 out of 20 cases. Although non-significant, ANN prediction was more successful for those participants exhibiting psychological androgyny ( t = 1.194, df = 17, p = 0.125 1-tailed, non-significant) and field independence ( t = - 1.320, df =18, p = 0.102 1- tailed, non-significant), as predicted. It is concluded that this is a viable and useful approach that would benefit further study. Keywords: dowsing Ð psi Ð precognition Ð physiology response Introduction It has long been reported that some individuals possess the ability to detect a wide range of stimuli beyond the range of the acknowledged human senses. Dowsing Ð the supposed evocation of unconscious responses by use of ideo- motor responses magnified by a physical device, such as forked twigs or a pen- dulum Ð has long been espoused as a technique for helping individuals to uti- lize untrained psi abilities (e.g. Eastwood, 1993). Laboratory research on direct mental influence of living systems (DMILS) and the detection of remote staring suggests that an individual’s conscious response may not be a good measure of psi, whereas such individuals do show a physiological reaction to certain psi-mediated stimuli ( e.g. Sah & Delanoy, 1994). If this is the case, then a system that looked at the physiological responses of an individual un- dertaking a psi task might be useful in helping to train that individual to Journal of Scienti®c Exploration, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 551±567, 1998 0892-3310/98  1998 Society for Scienti®c Exploration 551 551 1 Data was collected for this study in 1995 while the author was on a three-month fellowship at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The author may be contacted via email <Paul.Stevens@ed.ac.uk> or at the address above.