Charles "Chuck" Honorton 
(1946 - 1992)

Besides initiating the ganzfeld work, Honorton was also among the first to recognize the potential of Schmidt’s random number generator studies and to attempt theory-driven research in this area. Beginning with his very first RNG experiment (Honorton & Barksdale, 1972, reviewed in Stanley Krippner’s tribute), he came face to face with the challenge that psi-mediated experimenter effects pose to the interpretation of experimental outcomes and to model-testing. A few years later, in a seminal RNG study, he demonstrated that experimenters can also shape experimental outcomes through the manner in which they relate to subjects (Honorton, Ramsey, & Cabbibo, 1975). Thirty six participants were assigned either to an experimenter acting in a supportive or outgoing manner, or to one acting cold and aloof. Each group completed 200 RNG trials, attempting to guess which of two lamps would light up next. Subjects in the "positive interaction" group scored significantly above chance; those in the "negative interaction" group scored significantly below chance; and the difference was highly significant. The validity of the study’s conclusions was reinforced by split-half reliability tests of internal consistency for each group’s scores, and by subjects’ responses to a post-experimental questionnaire, confirming that they had indeed perceived the two experimenters in the manner intended. To this day, this experiment constitutes some of our best evidence for the importance of interpersonal experimenter effects in parapsychology.

Perhaps because of these personal encounters with both psi-mediated and interpersonal experimenter effects, Honorton increasingly sought to develop protocols that would strongly link testing procedures to the experience, needs, traits, or physiology of participants. Having been recently introduced to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Honorton became especially interested in exploring the possible roles of absorption and concentration in RNG-PK tasks. Meditation, emphasizing the disciplining of attention, seemed to be a natural starting point for such investigations, and a study by Honorton and May (1976) indirectly pointed to the potential of meditation in RNG-psi results. Ten subjects were involved, 6 of whom were regular meditators. Each subject contributed 5 high-aim and 5 low-aim 100-trial runs while receiving continuous visual feedback. Five of the 10 subjects obtained significantly more hits in the high-aim than the low-aim condition (p = .00006); 4 of these subjects were meditators.

In a more direct assessment of the influence of meditation on psi, Honorton (1977a) hooked up a Transcendental Meditation instructor to an EEG apparatus and examined RNG outputs in relation to different attentional and physiological conditions. Situated in a room adjacent to that of the RNG, the meditator first received event-by-event RNG feedback over 500 trials. Psi scoring during this phase was nonsignificant, though in the right direction (i.e., more hits in the high-aim than in the low-aim condition). In the second phase, the instructor simply meditated for 25 minutes, without receiving any RNG feedback. The RNG, however, continued to be sampled, its data being automatically segregated or "gated" according to whether or not the meditator’s EEG was predominantly in the theta/alpha range (4—13 Hz). RNG results here were near-significant (p = .058) during the gated trials, in which the meditator was within the theta/alpha range. Finally, in the third phase, the subject again received trial-by-trial feedback; this time, a significant difference between high- and low-aim trials was obtained (p = .0054), suggesting that meditation may have helped the instructor achieve a state conducive to volitional PK. However, in a follow-up study with 10 practitioners of Ajapa yoga (Winnett & Honorton, 1977), significant resuits were obtained prior to meditation (p = .005), but not following meditation. In contrast to the TM instructor’s increment in performance, the results here declined following meditation.

The above psychophysiological studies with meditators were in line with Honorton’s objective of tightly "coupling" participant parameters to psi data, and thus linking experimental outcomes to the participants rather than to investigators’ expectations. Two subsequent studies (Honorton & Tremmel, 1979) further explicated the possible links between RNG activity and subjects’ attentional state and psychophysiology. Framed within the conceptual context of Eccies’s interactionist dualism (1977), this theory-driven study focused exclusively upon unintentional PK. As in the second phase of the study with the TM instructor, the RNG here was sampled while subjects were absorbed in another task. The difference, however, was that in these studies participants were totally unaware of the import of the RNG and believed that they were simply engaged in an EEG-alpha biofeedback task. RNG data were automatically gated whenever the participant met pre-established alpha (8—13 Hz) brainwave criteria. In the first study involving 10 subjects, these gated RNG samples showed significant departures from expected levels of variance. The results suggested a relationship between RNG activity and either the subjects’ physiological state (i.e., alpha brainwaves) or their volitional activity (success in the control of these brainwaves). In a second experiment, involving 7 subjects, Honor-ton and Tremmel focused in on a test of these alternative explanations, by taking both gated and ungated RNG samples as well as RNG samples gated during the rest period, when no attempt was made to control EEG frequencies. Once again, significant results were obtained in the alpha-gated samples during the feedback periods; however, RNG samples were at chance during both feedback ungated periods and rest periods. Furthermore, the feedback-gated RNG results were significantly stronger than the rest-period gated results, thus suggesting a link specifically between RNG-PK and volitional success in accomplishing the EEG task.

While he recognized this was only a "feasibility study" with "many conceptual and methodological problems to be overcome" (Honorton, 1978, p. 43), Charles Honorton considered the gating work to hold major theoretical potential. He suggested that such research could add some empirical substance to the eternal debate on the mind-body problem; at the very least it could elevate the debate to a new level by demonstrating that both monistic and dualistic perspectives must come to terms with "extended psychophysical interactions," and not just personal consciousness and experience.

I was, myself, strongly intrigued by the gating work, and when the Maimonides lab closed down and Chuck invited Tremmel and me to join him in Princeton, I decided to consecrate my doctoral thesis to a replication and extension of this research. I was perplexed by the finding of "field-like" correlates of volition, and, in an effort to pinpoint their nature, designed a multifactorial experiment examining RNG-gated/ungated data under a number of different attention, intention, and awareness conditions. My own research design thus departed considerably from the studies which had inspired it, and, although the overall results were significant, for both "feedback" and "hidden" RNG conditions, the particular condition most pertinent to Honorton and Tremmel’s gated findings did not yield significant results (Varvoglis, 1982; Varvoglis & McCarthy, 1986). Nevertheless, I feel that the original gating work is a conceptually intriguing and empirically productive research paradigm; it deserves far more attention than it has thus far received.

Two more RNG studies by Honorton and Tremmel deserve mention (Honorton & Tremmel, 1980; Tremmel & Honorton, 1980). Involving 93 and 40 subjects, respectively, and yielding modestly significant results, these studies were among the first to explicitly attempt to blend the rigor of automated RNG research with the motivational appeal and absorptive qualities of video games. In this context, they were forerunners to PRL’s PsiLab project, which was not only a means to promote interlaboratory computer/RNG research, but also a testing ground for introducing "psi games" to the general public.

In my opinion, Honorton sensed, early on, that psi-testing software disguised as games could lead the way to a "universalist" form of parapsychological research (Varvoglis, 1992) whereby the field moves beyond its precarious dependence upon a few good laboratories and experimenters, and flourishes in entertainment centers, in homes, even in schools. Of course, at the time all this began, at Maimonides and elsewhere, the technology simply was not adequate to create truly psi-conducive software. Furthermore, the identification of such software with psi games may have been premature. As I have argued elsewhere (Varvoglis, 1992), to encourage psi in the general public through computer-based experiments, we need to go beyond the superficially entertaining games popular in video arcades and create multimedia programs which explicitly induce mental states and mindsets congruent with psi functioning. I believe that Chuck was well aware of this, and that his efforts to provide the field with reliable and meaningful testing procedures would ultimately have centered upon software which integrates RNG tasks with meditative, hypnotic, hypnagogic, or other psi-conducive states.

Charles Honorton certainly had his shortcomings. We each have our particular palette of strengths and weaknesses, both of which serve us or disserve us in different circumstances, and Chuck was no exception. He was not very good in managing those who worked with him; he did not know how to bring out the best in us, and he frequently allowed his own preconceptions and feelings to get in the way of cooperative work. Practically all of those who directly worked with him, whether at Maimonides or at PRL, have some recollection of unfair criticisms, intimidations, or slights. But in the end, death is a harsh reminder of the larger perspective, of what has really counted in one’s life. And what has counted in the case of Charles Honorton is his long, tireless, loving dedication to parapsychology, his eloquence and intelligence as spokesman of the field, his integrity as researcher, his deep commitment to the scientific method, his intuitive grasp of promise and potential, his sharp perception of patterns and trends in a plethora of z scores, and his search for the deeper meaning of it all.

He used his short time on earth well. 

REFERENCES

BRAUD, W. G., Wood, R., & BRAUD, L. W. (1975). Free response GESP performance during an experimental hypnagogic state induced by visual and acoustic ganzfeld techniques: A replication and extension. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 69, 105—113.

ECCLES, J. (1977). The human person in its two way relationship to the brain. InJ. D. Morris, W. G. Roll, & R. L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1976 (pp. 25 1—262). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

HONORTON, C. (1975). Objective determination of information rate in psi tasks with pictorial stimuli. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 69, 353—359.

HONORTON, C. (1976). Length of isolation and degree of arousal as probable factors influencing information retrieval in the ganzfeld. In J. D. Morris, W. G. Roll, & R. L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1974 (pp. 50—53). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

HONORTON, C. (1977a). Effects of meditation and feedback on psychokinetic performance: A pilot study with an instructor of TM. In J. D. Morris, W. G. Roll, & R. L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1976 (pp. 95—97). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

HONORTON, C. (1977b). Psi and internal attention states. In B. Wolman (Ed.), Handbook of parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold.

HONORTON, C. (1978). A parapsychological test of Eccies’ "neurophysiological hypothesis" of psychophysical interaction. In B. Shapin & L. Coly (Eds.), Brain/mind and parapsychology (pp. 35—43). New York: Parapsychology Foundation.

HONORTON, C. (1983). Response to Hyman’s critique of psi ganzfeld studies. In W. G. Roll, J. Beloff, & R. A. White (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1982 (pp. 23—26). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

VARVOGLIS, M. (1992). La rationalité de l’irrationnel. Paris: InterEditions. VARVOGLIS, M., & MCCARTHY, D. (1986). Conscious-purposive focus and PK: RNG activity in relation to awareness, task-orientation, and feedback. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 80, 1—30.

WINNETT, R., & HONORTON, C. (1977). Effects of meditation and feedback on psychokinetic performance: Results with practitioners of Ajapa Yoga. InJ. D. Morris, W. G. Roll, & R. L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1976 (pp. 97—98). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

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