Scientists Show There's No Such Thing As A Sixth Sense

Bet the psychics didn't see that one coming.

Ever feel sure that something about a person has changed, but not known what it is?

Via tumblr.com

Turns out that's probably not a sixth sense. (Who knew?)

Scientists at the University of Melbourne got 10 people to take a test to see if they could identify a change in a person's appearance.

Dr Piers Howe, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne

A photograph (like above) flashed up for 1.5 seconds before a 1 second break, then another image of the same person appeared for 1.5 second. The participants were asked if there was a change in the photograph and, if they thought there was, to identify it from a list of options. Each participant did this 140 times.

The participants were all good at realising when something had changed, but struggled to identify what exactly had changed.

Via ninjamonkey15.tumblr.com

Follow up experiments showed that participants were probably subconsciously noticing a difference in the "scene statistics" of the image. For example, they might notice that the amounts of red and green in the image changed but not be able to identify which part of the image had changed.

The scientists say the study "shows that people can indeed detect changes that they cannot identify, but debunks the claim that this is evidence for a sixth sense."

Of course this is just an explanation for one type of "sixth sense" and doesn't disprove all forms of extrasensory perception. So there's nothing to stop this happening.

Via cazzylimerence.tumblr.com

(Apart from all that other scientific research.)