| I am not a twin, but I have friends who are twins and some
other friends who are triplets.
What I have noticed, is that these friends have the tendency
to say the same thing (verbatim) at the same time. You could
argue that this is because of similar upbringing and similar
thinking processes; but that does not seem to cover it
completely. Perhaps it is the fact that they know each other
so well.
What is more eerie, is watching them in a discussion, they tend
to use the same gestures and make the same facial expressions.
When we have discussed whether or not "telepathy" comes up, they
agree that their level of communication is much tighter than with
most people. For example, when they are discussing something with
each other, they only use a few words--the meaning is clearly
transmitted via a verbal and perhaps mental "shorthand".
In this instance, I think it would be harder to disprove twins'
telepathy than to prove it!
--Eve
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| The following is a survey of parapsychology experiments done with twins.
It is from John Palmer's article "Extrasensory Perception: Research Findings",
which is in _Advances in Parapsychological Research: Vol 2. Extrasensory
Perception_ Edited by Stanley Krippner and published by Plenum Press.
Keep in mind, however, that the relevance of laboratory experiments to
"real-life" phenomena is unclear, in parapsychology as in all fields.
Some of this is technical and I have enclosed explanations in []. If anyone
wants the specific citations I can get them for them.
Topher
So, for what it is worth:
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3.5.4 Twins: Togetherness Outside the Womb
Twins often have been considered potentially ideal subjects for GESP
[telepathy] experiments in which one twin would try to "send" a target
to the other. It is tempting to speculate that twins might be
particularly able to "tune in" to each other telepathically because of
their common biological origin. Although such twin studies are
frequently talked about, very few have been published in the serious
literature.
Kubis and Rouke (1937) tested six pairs of twins by having them respond
simultaneously to cards looked at by the experimenter. Informal
testing with two of these pairs involved having the twins take turns
sending to each other. Results were essentially of a chance nature, as
were the results of a GESP experiment by Rogers (1960). Duane and
Behrendt (1965) reported remote driving of the EEG in 2 of 15 pairs of
identical twins. The report was very sketchy, but it would appear
that alpha waves evoked in one twin by photic driving [i.e., by
flashing a strobe light in the eyes of one twin at the appropriate
frequency for alpha waves] spontaneously and simultaneously appeared in
the EEG of the other twin located in another room. In a similar
experiment where an effort was made to induce plethysmographic [blood
pressure] reactions in a percipient [receiver] by showing emotional
verbal stimuli to the agent [sender], friends or spouses achieved
somewhat better results than did twins (Esser, Etter, and Chamberlain,
1967). Barron and Mordkoff (1967) found suggestive evidence of
autonomic responses [breathing, heartbeat, digestion, sweating, etc.]
in one twin coincident with arousal of his counterpart, but three other
pairs of identical twins produced null results. Nash and Buzby (1965)
tested 25 pairs of twins ranging in age from 5 to 13. Each twin
completed six DT clairvoyance runs [an ESP test where a deck of 25
"ESP" cards, are shuffled and without being looked at, placed face
down. The subject attempts to guess the cards starting at the top
and working down -- hence Down Through = DT. One run is one deck].
Overall results were nonsignificant, but a post hoc analysis [when an
experiment doesn't work, scientists frequently will do a post hoc
("after the fact") analysis to figure out why. Since if you look long
enough you will always find some pattern, even in random data, the
results of post hoc analysis can only be considered as "suggestive" of
hypothesis to be further tested, rather than as strong evidence for
anything] revealed that 10 of the 11 pairs of identical twins had
overall scores of the same algebraic sign (i.e., either above or below
chance) as compared to only 5 of 12 pairs of fraternal twins suitable
for this analysis. The difference was significant [meaning that the
probability that this would occur by chance was greater than 1 in 20].
In another clairvoyance experiment, however, France and Hogan (1973)
found no evidence of similar hit patterns between members of pairs of
identical twins, pairs of fraternal twins, or pairs of ordinary
siblings.
The best of the twin studies was a recent experiment by Charlesworth
(1975). Pairs of identical and fraternal twins were tested in a
free-response GESP experiment [a free-response experiment is one in
which the receiver presents his/her response by drawing a picture,
describing images, saying whatever pops into his/her mind, etc. rather
than by choosing from a fixed number of fixed targets like ESP cards.
This seems more natural but it is more time consuming and it is harder
to judge whether or not there is really a correspondence. GESP
means that it was a telepathy experiment, i.e., someone was trying
to deliberately send an image rather than the "percipient" simply
trying to guess, for example, what is in a sealed box.] presented in
the context of an imaginary dream. Each twin was sender once and
receiver once. The fraternal twins had significantly more hits than
expected by chance and significantly more than obtained by the
identical twins, although the twin types apparently differed also on
extroversion [many other experiments have shown that, at least under
laboratory conditions, extroverts do better on ESP tests than
introverts], a possible confounding variable [which is statistical
jargon meaning that it might be the extroversion rather than any more
direct effect of fraternal-twinness which resulted in the difference].
3.5.4a Conclusion. There is no evidence that twins have any special
aptitude for "telepathic" exchange. However, more research on the
topic is needed, especially studies comparing twins and ordinary
siblings.
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