European Journal of Parapsychology c  2007 European Journal of Parapsychology Volume 22.1, pages 73–89 ISSN: 0168-7263 Psi as Compensation for Modality Impairment — A Replication Study Using Sighted and Blind Participants Lance Storm and Mikele Barrett-Woodbridge Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, School of Psychology, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia Abstract A replication study of an earlier study by Storm and Thalbourne (2001) was conducted to test the hypothesis that blind people com- pensate for their impairment by developing superior psi ability com- pared to sighted people. Participants had to describe a concealed line drawing (target), and then rank four drawings (1 target + 3 decoys) from ‘most likely’ to be the target to ‘least likely’. The concealed pic- ture was removed from its envelope and assigned its corresponding rank. A significant psi effect was found for the whole sample, and for the sighted sub-sample, but not the vision-impaired sub-sample. An above-chance success-rate of 28% (π = .54, where π MCE = .50) was found for the totally blind, which was superior (not significantly) to the rest of the sample (i.e., sighted + partially sighted participants) with their hit-rate of 26% (π = .51). In the present replication study, it was hypothesized that totally blind individuals have superior psi test performance to sighted individuals. However, the totally blind group and the sighted group both scored at the same below-chance hit-rate of 21% (p = .365; π = .45). There was thus no evidence that psi compensates for total blindness. When the dataset from the present study was combined with Storm and Thalbourne’s (2001) dataset (total N = 160), the sighted group scored significantly above chance on the sum-of-ranks measure (p = .040). It was argued that if there is compensation for blindness, it might work in ways other than paranormal. Correspondence details: Lance Storm, Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, School of Psychology, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia. Email: lance.storm@psychology.adelaide.edu.au. 73