Transliminality, brain function, and synesthesia.
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Adolescent↗
Biomedical subjects
M A Thalbourne
Publications and source records attributed to M A Thalbourne.
Measures of the sheep-goat variable, transliminality, and their correlates.
In this study a battery of pencil-and-paper tests was given to 125 first-year psychology students (27% men). This battery included as measures of belief in the paranormal (the so-called "sheep-goat variable") the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale, Tobacyk's Revised Paranormal Belief Scale (comprised of two scales--New Age Philosophy and Traditional Paranormal Beliefs), and the Anomalous Experience Inventory (comprised of five scales: Anomalous/Paranormal Experience, Belief, Ability, Fear, and Drug Use). Also included were the 29-item Transliminality Scale, a 35-item Kundalini Scale, an experimental 13-item Determinism/Free Will scale, and a number of single-question items aimed specifically at transliminality. The results were, first, that virtually all the measures of the sheep-goat variable were intercorrelated with each other (range, .34 to .77), thereby providing support for their convergent validity. Second, scores on the Kundalini Scale and Drug Use correlated significantly with scores on the sheep-goat variable, replicating previous findings. And, finally, many correlates of transliminality were found, again including scores on the Kundalini Scale and Drug Use (prescribed and illicit) as well as certain determinism-related beliefs. Beliefs, experiences, and behaviors associated with transliminality and the Kundalini experience may reflect a desire to escape a negative state of being.
Adolescent↗
The revised transliminality scale: reliability and validity data from a Rasch top-down purification procedure.
The concept of transliminality ("a hypothesized tendency for psychological material to cross thresholds into or out of consciousness") was anticipated by William James (1902/1982), but it was only recently given an empirical definition by Thalbourne in terms of a 29-item Transliminality Scale. This article presents the 17-item Revised Transliminality Scale (or RTS) that corrects age and gender biases, is unidimensional by a Rasch criterion, and has a reliability of.82. The scale defines a probabilistic hierarchy of items that address magical ideation, mystical experience, absorption, hyperaesthesia, manic experience, dream interpretation, and fantasy proneness. These findings validate the suggestions by James and Thalbourne that some mental phenomena share a common underlying dimension with selected sensory experiences (such being overwhelmed by smells, bright lights, sights, and sounds). Low scores on transliminality remain correlated with "tough mindedness" in on Cattell 16PF test, as well as "self-control" and "rule consciousness," whereas high scores are associated with "abstractedness" and an "openness to change" on that test. An independent validation study confirmed the predictions implied by our definition of transliminality. Implications for test construction are discussed.
Adolescent↗
Relation between transliminality and openness to experience.
Testing 40 psychology undergraduates, an attempt was made to assess whether there is a positive correlation between transliminality (psychological material crossing thresholds into and out of consciousness) and openness to experience as measured by Brebner's Quickscales. The correlation was positive and significant but small (r = .27, p = .05).
Adolescent↗
Relation of transliminality and vividness of visual imagery.
Responses of 50 psychology undergraduates to scores on a measure of transliminality (psychological material crossing thresholds into and out of consciousness) and on a measure of vividness of visual imagery were correlated. 11. The value is positive but clearly not significant.
Adolescent↗
Manic-depressiveness and its correlates.
Manic-depressiveness is the name here given to a hypothesized personality continuum that has, at one extreme, manic-depressive psychosis. A Manic-Depressiveness Scale is described, which comprises three scales, Manic Experience, Depressive Experience, and the sum of the two, since they are correlated. 250 undergraduate psychology students at the University of Adelaide and at Goldsmiths' College, London, were administered the Manic-Depressiveness Scale along with 12 measures including the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Revised). Scores on the total Manic-Depressiveness Scale tended (in order of size of association) to be correlated with Schizotypal Personality (and three subscales), Neuroticism, Magical Ideation, Mystical Experience, Belief in the Paranormal, absence of Social Naïveté, and Psychoticism. Manic Experience showed a pattern of relationships with the above variables broadly similar to that of Depressive Experience but included Creative Personality, while Depressive Experience included introversion. The relationship between manic-depressiveness and schizotypy is discussed.
Adolescent↗
The Manic Depressiveness Scale: a preliminary effort at replication and extension.
In a previous paper, an 18-item scale was presented to measure the extent to which a person had experienced symptoms resembling mania or clinical depression. There was evidence that, within a group of 37 bipolar persons, scores on this Manic Depressiveness Scale correlated significantly positively with number of manic-depression-relevant medications currently being taken by the subject. In the present study, 24 subjects (9 unipolar depressives, 15 bipolars) were administered this scale, and aspects of their clinical history were taken. For the bipolar subjects only, scores on the scale correlated significantly with number of relevant medications (r = .45, p < .05, one-tailed), with number of hospitalizations (r = .46, p < .05), and with psychiatrist-rated severity of illness (r = .45, p < .05). Bipolar patients also scored significantly higher than did unipolar patients on the Manic Experience subscale. The Manic Depressiveness Scale thus appears to have some predictive validity.
Adult↗
Testing the McBeath hypothesis: relation of sexual orientation and belief in the paranormal.
According to McBeath, the incidence of homosexuality among experiments of paranormal phenomena exceeds that which would be expected by chance. Therefore, 50 homosexual men and 50 heterosexual men were administered the forced-choice version of the 18-item Australian Sheep-Goat Scale as a measure of belief in and alleged experience of the paranormal. As no differences were found in scores on belief/experience, there was no evidence for McBeath's hypothesis.
Adolescent↗
Belief in the paranormal and its relationship to schizophrenia-relevant measures: a confirmatory study.
This study was an attempt to confirm previously reported findings that persons who believe in and claim experience of the paranormal tend to score higher on various measures relevant to schizophrenia. Level of belief in the paranormal was measured in a sample of university students. As predicted, those subjects whose scores indicated higher belief in the paranormal tended to score significantly higher on the Magical Ideation Scale, the Perceptual Aberration Scale, and the combined Perceptual Aberration-Magical Ideation (Per-Mag) Scale. However, the correlation with the MMPI's Schizophrenia Scale was significant for males only.
Adult↗
An attempt to construct short scales measuring manic-depressive-like experience and behaviour.
Two nine-item self-rating questionnaire scales were developed to measure, on the one hand, features typically associated with a history of mania-like phenomena, and, on the other hand, features typically associated with a history of clinical depression. These scales were added to produce an 18-item scale which, it was hypothesized, might measure degree of history of manic-depressive-like phenomena. Results tended to support this view: (1) compared with students, manic-depressives obtained significantly higher scores on each of these three scales; (2) all scales, but especially the manic experience scale, correlated significantly positively with the MMPI Hypomania Scale; and (3) for a subset of the manic-depressives, a person's scores on two of the three new scales were significantly correlated with the number of different manic-depression-relevant medications that that person was taking.
Adult↗