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| Previous Recipients of the Eileen Coly Grant for Research: 2006 Prof. Etzel Cardeña On September 1st, 2006, Dr. Etzel Cardeña was awarded the first Eileen Coly Grant for Research. The grant benefited Dr. Cardeña’s post-graduate student, Devin Terhune. Both Dr. Cardeña and Terhune are past recipients of the Foundation’s financial support programs: Cardeña received the 1985 Garrett Scholarship when he was still a post-graduate student. Devin Terhune was the first Tart Scholarly Incentive Award winner in 2002 and also received a General Scholarly Incentive Award in 2004. The Recipient  A native of México, Prof. Cardeña was educated in his home country and in Canada before obtaining a Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of California, Davis, under the supervision of Charles Tart. Following his doctorate he held a number of academic appointments, including a visiting scholar position at Stanford University, a faculty appointment at Georgetown University, and a stint as Chair and Director of the Graduate Program at The University of Texas-Pan American. Most recently, he was appointed the first Thorsen Chair in Psychology at the University of Lund in Sweden with a remit that includes both parapsychology and hypnosis. Cardeña has published three books, including the edited volume, Varieties of Anomalous Experience published by the American Psychological Association, and 120 or so other publications. His areas of expertise include alterations of consciousness and anomalous experiences, dissociative reactions and disorders, and research on hypnosis. His empirical and theoretical work has garnered awards from various professional and academic institutions, and he has also worked professionally as a theater director and actor. For more information on Dr. Cardeña, his publications and the courses he teaches at Lund, click here.
The Research The research Cardeña and his doctoral student, Devin Terhune, conducted at Lund centered on spontaneous mentation (thoughts) and responses to a standardized psi test as a function of hypnotizability, as part of a program of study evaluating the relationship between hypnotic conditions, hypnotic ability, and performance in psi tests. After evaluating participants’ hypnotic responsivity (hypnotizability) through standardized procedures, they planned to select at least 21 high and 14 low hypnotizable individuals and collect reports of what they were experiencing just before random prompts. The prompts and recordings were managed through personal digital assistants (PDAs) to obtain data on their stream of consciousness. Experience samples were solicited at five random times during normal waking hours each day. The participants’ reports were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. In the second stage, participants were asked to provide their mentation at their leisure, but preferably during non-distracted moments when they could use self-hypnosis, in response to a randomly-selected video clips being sent that day by a remote, self-hypnotized sender. They were asked to do this at least three times during the day for 10 different days and clips. For each clip, the participants and two “masked” judges with access to the participants’ mentation rank ordered four clips, one of which would be the “target.” Once the experiment was started, the senders did not interact with either participants or the researcher who were presenting the clips until the whole experiment was over, so as to avoid possible sensory leakages. Cardeña and Terhune felt that this study could help clarify the relationship between hypnosis and psi by systematically evaluating hypnotizability and being able to evaluate the participant’s baseline mentation when they are not “responding” to a psi test. ********** For more information on the Coly Grant for Research and how to apply, click here. For more information on the individuals and grants awarded previously, click here. For a biography of Prof. Cardeña, click here. For information about Prof. Cardeña’s 1985 Eileen Garrett Scholarship, click here and scroll down. For information about Devine Terhune’s Tart Award, click here and scroll down. For information about Devine Terhune’s Scholarly Incentive Award, click here and scroll down. |
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 www. parapsychology. org |