Alpha Enhancement and the Likelihood of an Alpha Experience

The following experiment was conducted as a preliminary investigation of the influence of the following four variables on the likelihood of having an “alpha experience” during brief alpha training: I) Subject Type (unpaid Volunteers versus Students required to participate in a psychology experiment), 2) suggestion (Alpha Experience Set or no set), 3) the degree of alpha enhancement achieved, and 4) Sex. Dependent measures were four different indexes of the degree of alpha enhancement based on an integrated amplitude measure of alpha strength, and the ratings of subjects' post‐session subjective reports (SRs) on a 0 to 6 scale, where “6” is most like an alpha experience. Forty‐eight (N=6) participants trained for 5 6‐min enhancement periods alternated with 5 2‐min rest periods, both with eyes open. None of the independent variables had significant effects on the SRs, with the exception of a three‐way interaction, which was interpreted as due to the effects of an uncontrolled fifth variable: the degree of experienced success. Most important, although several persons did have alpha experiences, none of the four enhancement measures were significantly correlated with the SR ratings. In fact, all four of the correlations were negative. These results demonstrate that in our experimental situation the likelihood of an alpha experience is unrelated to the degree of alpha enhancement.