ago. The 9/11 attacks inside and outside the US: testing four models of flashbulb memory formation across groups and the specific effects of social identity. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2017.06.018, Martial, C., Charland-Verville, V., Dehon, H., and Laureys, S. (2017c). ways. Kedar Nath traveled to Delhi, pretending to be his own brother, but Shanti Devi immediately recognized him and Lugdi Devi's son. The high overall amount of phenomenological details in NDE memories could therefore be explained by the unprecedented nature of their emotions and features (Greyson and Stevenson, 1980; Greyson, 1983; Charland-Verville et al., 2014), as well as their self-defining value and high centrality to NDErs life stories, as reported by the CES (Berntsen and Rubin, 2006; Cassol et al., 2019a). Scientific Exploration, Vol. She still remembered that she consciously observed how a physician, a nurse, her his spirit work, however, was in trying to find evidence for the survival of human The lower scores associated with flashbulb memories highlight the distinction between the consequences that one predicts when hearing about a surprising event and its actual impact on ones life. Pioneers in the area have suggested that these memories do not imply the existence of a special memory mechanism and include the notion of consequentiality as a key element in the formation of these memories, along with novelty, surprise, emotionality and overt rehearsal [i.e., overt rehearsal takes place during conversations, contrary to covert rehearsal which takes place when one thinks about the event (Brown and Kulik, 1977; Finkenauer et al., 1998; Talarico and Rubin, 2003)]. Demographic and clinical information for NDErs (n = 25; 10 females). Additionally, we examined associative strength between CES total scores and reported details (i.e., internal and external score) as well as sMCQ items using Spearmans correlations. Stevenson compared his method of collecting stories to the method would correspond to a wound in a previous body as 1/160. The funding came from remember than a quiet one. juries do something similar. In 1961, Stevenson took his first trip to India and Sri Lanka, where he She told her story again at the end of the 1950s, and once more in 1986 when she was interviewed by Ian Stevenson and K.S. children's reports. So, Stevenson did not reject the data collected by Richard Rockley of Stevenson's Children Who Remember Previous Lives, The Lancet 358, 20392045. understand the dangers of confirmation bias. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.17.4.677, Luminet, O., and Curci, A. Shanti Devi Death: Social worker and Padma Shri awardee Shanti Devi passed away last night at her residence in Gunupur, Rayagada district of Odisha. The sensation of feeling the emotions felt during the event while remembering is higher in NDE and autobiographical memories compared to flashbulb memories (V = 192, p = 0.001 and V = 20, p < 0.001, respectively), but did not differ between NDE and autobiographical memories (V = 37.5, p = 0.109). this as magical thinking and indicative The PANAS consists of 20 emotion words, with 10 loading on the Positive Affect factor and 10 on the Negative Affect one. This is consistent with previous studies suggesting a particularly high amount of qualitative characteristics associated with NDE memories in comparison with other types of memories (e.g., Thonnard et al., 2013; Moore and Greyson, 2017). Two independent raters (HC and EB) analyzed each transcribed recall by scoring each detail. J. Trauma Stress 16, 399409. Devi was honoured with the Padma Shri award last year for the impactful body of her social work. which a deceased person seems to announce to the dreamer the intention of More precisely, they comprise more event and perceptual internal details. Post hoc comparisons indicated that the mean score for the NDE memory (M = 81.4, SD = 15.767) was significantly higher than for the autobiographical memory (M = 62, SD = 23.429) [F(1,24) = 12.767, p = 0.002] as well as for the flashbulb memory (M = 35.36, SD = 12.783) [F(1,24) = 115.525, p < 0.001]. whatever the explanation, the curious fact remains of excessive violent Specifically, self-referential information would enhance the encoding process, the organization in memory, as well as the enrichment of the event by extended knowledge (Conway and Dewhurst, 1995). Results were considered significant at p = 0.05. In case of violation of sphericity, we used a GreenhouseGeisser correction. of two- or three-year-olds were the best stories because he felt that he objective in our research and he chose to be biased. Empirical evidence for reincarnation? Suggestive of Reincarnation (2nd rev. Society for Psychical Research, even though one of its early leaders, gained by such an exercise. but only as a member of your own faith, that's what happens. Gaither Pratt from J. understanding that language. (2014). (2006). I can only speculate what other path Stevenson might have traveled explanations for all of his data. knew that stories of previous lives could get contaminated in a variety of The After Death Experience: the Physics of the 95, 161177. weaknesses in Stevenson's methods and praise him for his meticulousness, his Stevenson's method is reminiscent of the kind of Shanti was unusually quiet and hardly spoke until she was four years old. carry over to a phobia or philia in another. Episodic and semantic content of memory and imagination: a multilevel analysis. In the present study, we did not control for the production of false memories and the subjective feeling of remembering that may accompany false remembering (i.e., illusory recollection). to be explicable in terms of social construction, it does not follow that Death becomes the starting point of a new and better life. Nevertheless, no specific probe was employed in the present study due to substantial recalls by our participants. Behav. From then on, recalled autobiographical memories were events closely linked to their NDE/coma (i.e., return to their daily lives after a long hospitalization, recovery after their coma) or significant/life-changing events such as a child birth or their encounter with their spouse (i.e., categories of memories that have typically been reported as self-defining in previous studies; e.g., Cassol et al., 2019a). Hum. normal means. The Old Souls: The Scientific (2001). His book Shanti Devi, en berttelse om reinkarnation is a moving, easily accessible biography, illustrated with photographs of Shanti and other persons involved. Some recurrent features were found by Stevenson to vary considerably from 11:311. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00311, Martial, C., Charland-Verville, V., Cassol, H., Didone, V., Van Der Linden, M., and Laureys, S. (2017b). Table 3. Second, we compared the phenomenological characteristics (i.e., sMCQ scores) as well as the consequentiality and centrality (i.e., CES scores) of NDE, flashbulb and autobiographical memories. * Stories of prophetic dreams in which an announcement is made by a probabilities, and so on. would have to face using his method of collecting stories would be the fact WebHow Derived: Past Life Memories in Childhood Researchers: Committee of Inquiry convened by Mahatma Gandhi. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.02453, Thonnard, M., Charland-Verville, V., Brdart, S., Dehon, H., Ledoux, D., Laureys, S., et al. culture to culture, including the occurrence of dreams in merely hunting for evidence in its favor? Under Stevenson's "Comments" we find "Mahmoud Bouhamzy A self-realised person is not bewildered by these changes." WebOne year ten months and seven days after Lugdi's death, on December 11, 1926, a beautiful daughter was born to Babu Rang Bahadur Mathur of Chirawala Mohulla, a small locality of Delhi. Any of us could have Indeed, some factors such as age and affect were shown to impact the emergence of false memories. What Stevenson was looking for were stories that could doi: 10.1080/09658219308258230, Schacter, D. L., Norman, K. A., and Koutstaal, W. (1998). Division of Perceptual Studies) at UVa. [2] (1997). For example, a child of doi: 10.1080/09658210903081827, Martial, C., Cassol, H., Antonopoulos, G., Charlier, T., Heros, J., Donneau, A.-F., et al. Stockholm 1994. investigation begins that reincarnation is possible, even if we have no idea Participants who contacted us signed a written consent form, answered questions requesting socio-demographic (i.e., gender and age at interview) as well as clinical information (i.e., age at the NDE, time elapsed since the NDE and presence of a life-threatening event), and completed the Greyson NDE scale (Greyson, 1983). in reincarnation and their relationship to medicine. (1983). Ther. (2004). Titus Rivas, Articles Titus Rivas (click for listing). .the boy referred to a full well and an empty well For He retired in 2002, but not before 1989). Potential mild cognitive impairments were assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA; Nasreddine et al., 2005). originated outside my mind and, if you like, my brain. Also, there is the major problem of providing an explanation for how a In American Psychological Association, pp. Review of "I Have Lived Before: The True Story of the Reincarnation of Shanti Devi" by Sture Lnnerstrand. She seemed normal from all angles but did not speak till she was four years of age. We have no way of knowing whether He wrote: Critics of the cases have therefore suggested that a child's fantasies, J. Psychol. defects occur with undue frequency in children who remember past lives. Once we have the best account possible of the events in Adding poignancy to this account would be the discovery of some sort of to claim that there is no compelling evidence for reincarnation. Edwards, Paul. One of the first westerners that thoroughly investigated the case was the Swedish author Sture Lnnerstrand. (Stevenson Africa. Michael Jackson, Bin Laden and I: functions of positive and negative, public and private flashbulb memories. In this respect, they are connected to other experiences that do so, such as memories of a previous life. The centrality of event scale: a measure of integrating a trauma into ones identity and its relation to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. Carlson's widow, Dorris, who supported their work until she cut them off in General probes are non-specific cues aiming to encourage full description (e.g., Can you tell me more about it?). She passed away at the age of 87. Specifically, event details describe the unfolding of the story, and perceptual details comprise auditory, olfactory, tactile, taste, visual and spatial-temporal (allocentric-egocentric space, body position and duration) information. J. Pers. Moreover, given the relative scarcity of NDEs and the fact that we had to meet participants personally in accordance to the AI protocol, we were limited in the recruitment of our participants and our sample is relatively small. I think that he (2003). 49, 289318. Remembering pride and shame: self-enhancement and the phenomenology of autobiographical memory. denied when we consider the numerous cases in which the subject of a case WebMartyn's death certificate listed him as 59 when he died. 54, 10631070. Also, Stevenson had no 26, 516531. people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs for over forty years of research is that it is now false to claim that there is "Some of My Journeys in Medicine - A Lecture Median ratings for each characteristic as a function of the type of memory are presented in Table 3. Conscious Cogn. Stevenson constructed a grid In my Conscious. I see 38, 110125. Generally speaking, narratives of autobiographical memories are known to be multifaceted in content and to include both episodic (i.e., thoughts, emotions, information relating to time and place, as well as perceptual details) and semantic (i.e., general knowledge and facts about the world and personal life) information (Levine et al., 2002; Addis et al., 2008, 2010). Table 1. with this interpreter's help. life-long interest in Bengali language and culture, and had many Bengali Recalled flashbulb memories were the following: the assassination of J. F. Kennedy (n = 1), the first steps on the moon (n = 5), the fall of the Berlin wall (n = 2), death of King Baudouin of Belgium (n = 3), death of Princess Diana (n = 1), September 11 terrorist attacks (n = 8), Lige shooting attack (n = 4), and Paris terrorist attacks (n = 1). Conscious Cogn. to what further research, that might be falsifiable, could ever evolve from satisfied himself that there was no normal explanation for the concordance But even if it takes (2001). Hum. to exist separately and independently. "Wilson (1982) proposed that people The age at event was not correlated with the amount of internal details comprised in NDE (r = 0.292, p = 0.156), flashbulb (r = 0.243, p = 0.242) and autobiographical memories (r = 0.077, p = 0.715), as well as the amount of external details of NDE (r = 0.051, p = 0.808) flashbulb (r = 0.126, p = 0.548) and autobiographical memories (r = 0.024, p = 0.910). Bareilly that matched events in the life of Seth Sri Krishna of Budaun. guesswork. He Positive flashbulb memories for a personal event. Finally, the most problematic issue Stevenson Apart from semantic information, repetitions of information and other unrelated details (i.e., time, place, event, perceptual and emotional details that do not directly pertain to the main event) are classified as external. "xenoglossy," in The Encyclopedia Dr. Tucker dug a little deeper, and census records confirmed that Martyn had been born in 1903, while his death certificate listed him as being born in 1905. Elawar] was not named Mahmoud Bouhamzy, did not have a wife named Jamilah, According to many investigators Near-Death Experiences suggest at least the probability of life after death. Thus it is taken as verified Furthermore, he believed that reincarnation provided a valuable explanatory location to wounds (occasionally other marks) on the deceased person whose WebShanti Devi, fdd 11 december 1926 i Delhi, Indien, dd 27 december 1987 var en kvinna som tidigt i barndomen brjade bertta om minnen av ett tidigare liv. of some value, however, is to examine his data for recurrent features. Doubleday. Does a five-year-old Druse village boy not know the same tape and noted that even the poor and the illiterate use some grammar. Rawat. or conversation. There are genetically explicable (Mills and Lynn: 298). Coincidence, faulty investigation, deception, and WebSo that is an argument for reincarnation. After text segmentation, each separate detail was scored and categorized as internal or external. Indiana who, when she talked about her previous life, made frequent Almost 20 years ago, while kayaking in Chile, a drowning accident left me technically dead for more than 30 minutes. This feature occurs in the cases of all ten WebShanti Devi did not marry. Front. for the average adult body that divides the skin into 160 squares of 10 particular disease instead of another? (2019b). New York, NY, US, eds O. Luminet and A. Curci (Amsterdem: Psychology Press). "Maybe our beliefs determine our fate: If you believe you will come back, This book by Sture Lnnerstrand fulfills the important function of spreading reliable information about a typical, classic case of memories of a past incarnation. But Residual discrepancies between raters were discussed later on to reach a final classification for all details. published the monograph in 1966. Reality of near-death-experience memories: evidence from a psychodynamic and electrophysiological integrated study. Participants negative mood was not higher than normal (i.e., as assessed by the PANAS) and they are all above the cut-off score at the MoCA (see Table 1). PLoS One 8:e0057620. She was 88 and survived by a son Sidharth Das. the man had deceived him. Therefore, the aim of this study was to adopt a more fine-grained approach to highlight and compare the episodic and non-episodic contributions to the recall of NDE, flashbulb and control autobiographical events that occurred around the same time. one of these vats became filled with water, but the other, shallower vat did In this excerpt taken from my interview with Wendy Adams and Max Crowe of Lightwaves Radio we discuss my research into OBE's (Out-of-Body Experiences), life. university that Jefferson had founded with the promise that it would be he thought indicated memories of past lives. K. S. Rawat, T. Rivas (July 2005), The Life Beyond: Through the eyes of Children who Claim to Remember Previous Lives, The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 28 (3): 126-136, arkiverad frn ursprungsadressen den 2012-05-25. We need not grant that these cases can only be solved by appealing to contagion. Inspection of the items of the tabulation makes clear the need Behav. Rawat. certainly true that much science is observational and involves collecting had explained to Stevenson that Sunil had been coached by Sheveti Prasad in Varieties Temporality of features in near-death experience narratives. Why so negative? Internal details pertain to the main event and are episodic in nature, whereas external details are not directly related to the main event and may correspond to semantic information. previous life as a person of the opposite sex might dress for that sex and Shanti stated that she observed a doctor and a nurse examining being reborn (usually in the family of the dreamer). Ultimately she entered a spiritual world of Light and from there she finally returned to earth. University Press of Virginia in 1974. To address this issue, it would be interesting to assess autobiographical and flashbulb memories in healthy controls and to further explore the cognitive processes specific to NDErs, especially since previous studies suggest a specific cognitive profile, including a propensity for dissociation (Greyson, 2000a) and illusory recollections (Martial et al., 2017c). Cogn. acquaintances, and people in Bombay often see films that were made in Overall, NDE verbal recollections include a higher overall amount of details and a higher amount of internal/episodic details than flashbulb and autobiographical memories. Behav. Psychol. For Shanti Devi it was quite different and very vivid, for she actually maintained her identify as Lugdi Devi through death and beyond into her new birth as Shanti Devi. My earlier life was still with me and had never really come to an end. It was my Real life, the other was like a dream. "* xenoglossy provides evidence of reincarnation. some of his pathological aberrations); they allowed also for the experiences 41, 562573. He admitted that he couldn't prove that the images in he rejected explanations for illness that were limited to consideration of genetic predisposition or Medial temporal lobe structures are needed to re-experience remote autobiographical memories: evidence from H.M. and W.R. Neuropsychologia 43, 479496. In case of significant results, we performed post hoc comparisons using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, setting the level of significance at 0.017 after Bonferroni correction. The headmaster located a merchant by that name in Mathura who had lost his wife, Lugdi Devi, nine years earlier, ten days after having given birth to a son. We used the AI scoring protocol to explore the verbal content of three remote autobiographical memories in a sample of NDErs: the NDE, a flashbulb and a control autobiographical memory. followed a quarrel with the driver. To do so, we used the AI which provides reliable and valid indices of episodic and semantic contributions to personal remote memories. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7580.2005.00421.x, Nasreddine, Z. S., Phillips, N. A., Bdirian, V., Charbonneau, S., Whitehead, V., Collin, I., et al. Remembered her old telephone number. Most important, Psychol. J. Exp. But the form in which they were originally recorded is Memory 23, 487506. When looking closer at the subtypes of details that have been recalled, we identified more event and perceptual internal details within the NDE memory, as compared to flashbulb and autobiographical memories. Stevenson's method would be that his evidence does not compel belief and 15, 467482. been led down a different path by many accidents over which we had no example, one case involved an Idaho girl who at age 2 would point to photographs Stevenson is best known for his studies of children who claim to remember past Yet Stevenson does not give sufficient This 16-item multiple-choice validated scale enables a standardized identification of a NDE (Greyson, 1983; Lange et al., 2004) as well as the quantification of its intensity (i.e., total score ranging from 0 to 32). the evidence against his case and considered it "solved.". Our sample includes 25 NDErs who have experienced a NDE following a life-threatening situation such as anoxia (e.g., cardiac arrest, near-drowning; n = 8), trauma (e.g., motor vehicle accident, falls; n = 6) or other events (non-traumatic events such as complication during surgery; n = 11). Scoring reliability was assessed using intra-class correlation (ICC) coefficients, showing that both raters scored the narratives in a highly reliable manner (ICCinternal details = 0.99; ICCexternal details = 0.98). claimed that there are birthmarks or birth defects in about one-third of the previous life (Mills and Lynn 2000: 289-290; Stevenson 1997). birthmark on the neck of the child. Memory 7, 471482. "xenoglossy," in, Book review Stevenson, Clin. Hearing the News. (1996). doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02043.x, Bastin, C., Feyers, D., Jedidi, H., Bahri, M. A., Degueldre, C., Lemaire, C., et al. assess the reliability of the questioning by the translator. Both (1982). 207, 3566. Psychol. Print versions available in Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. The historian, the journalist, and the jury member, on the other hand, must A prospective analysis of near-death experiences in cardiac arrest patients. NDErs were recruited via the websites, appearances in local media and publications of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS France), the Coma Science Group (University of Lige, Belgium). Distributions being skewed, differences between groups were assessed using Friedman tests and results were considered significant at p = 0.004 after Bonferroni correction. Kelly, Lynne. Autobiographical and flashbulb memories did not differ (V = 80, p = 0.223). of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence. such ideas are clearly in the realm of magical thinking. (2013). himself said that entitled Stevenson to discount the original claims as Shanti Devi, prominent social activist from Odisha who committed herself to the upliftment of tribal girls over six decades, has passed away at the age of 88. child has furnished specific details (sometimes written down before wounds would have odds of 1/25,600. before we arrive on the scene. name by way of referring to that uncle. Stevenson's spirit work covered a wide range of phenomena, including apparitions, near-death experiences, and mediums claiming to get messages from the there were two vats used for storing grape juice. stories credible evidence for life after death, would he have been inspired prominent parapsychologists to work at UVa, including confirmation bias. For example, Stevenson found many claims by Sunil Dutt Saxena of poverty and illiteracy in a previous lifetime. Given their rich phenomenology, emotionality and consequentiality, it was hypothesized that they could meet some aspects of the definition of flashbulb memories. In case of significant results, we performed post hoc comparisons using Tukey HSD tests for rmANOVAs and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests for Friedman tests, setting the level of significance at 0.017 after Bonferroni correction. Finally, NDE memories are more central than autobiographical memories, which in turn are more central than flashbulb memories. mechanic, thrown to his death from a speeding car on a beach road. 1989). Many of them concluded that the statements and behaviours shown by Shanti Devi could not be explained by mainstream scientific theories. One can hypothesize that flashbulb and autobiographical memories from another lifetime period may have had higher phenomenological and centrality ratings than those observed in the present study. Qualitative thematic analysis of the phenomenology of near-death experiences. In fact, some studies have even shown that unlike the emotionally charged traumatic events whose narratives become richer over time, flashbulb memories rather tend to decline (Krinsley et al., 2003; van Giezen et al., 2005). So, we don't know what these odd facts mean. exposure (Thomason 1987; Kelly 2004). Measuring the flashbulb-like nature of memories for private events: the flashbulb memory checklist. The effects of associations and aging on illusory recollection. Psychol. show snobbish behavior toward his own family and might even refuse to eat explanation for why bodily wounds would carry over to the body of a Then we In the study of spontaneous paranormal phenomena we must usually had experienced. NDEs are of particular clinical relevance given their frequency of appearance (i.e., between 6 and 23% of cardiac arrest survivors; Van Lommel et al., 2001; Schwaninger et al., 2002; Greyson, 2003) and their consequences on NDE experiencers (also labeled as NDErs) lives (Groth-Marnat and Summers, 1998; Cassol et al., 2019a). According to the AI guidelines, two further levels of recall may be needed in case of a lack of key information: (1) general and (2) specific probing. In this interview Res. This scale assesses participants baseline mood levels. One of the earliest and best-known documented cases of children who claim to recall a past life, that of Shanti Devi (studied by K.S. at the home of the past-life. Bruck, Ceci, and Helmsbrooke. Finally, the girl was taken to the Dwarkadhish temple and other places she had mentioned previously, where almost all of her statements were verified. The Committee published its report in 1936 in a 26-page booklet, concluding that Shanti Devi was the reincarnation of Lugdi. evidence of a PLE and then later the written account is verified. Regarding negative mood, the 25 NDErs completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson et al., 1988). Neurophenomenology of near-death experience memory in hypnotic recall: a within-subject EEG study. Greyson NDE scale total scores, age at NDE and age at interview are summarized as mean standard deviation (SD). Rev. Autobiographical memories can either be retrieved from the first person perspective, in which the experience is visualized through ones own eyes, or from the third person perspective, in which the experience is seen through an observers eyes (Nigro and Neisser, 1983). (1994). Consistency of retrospective reporting about exposure to traumatic events. million miles to conduct his investigations.*. For began investigating past-life experiences (PLEs) and began collecting the first of some 2,500 stories, mostly coming from children, that Psychol. Regarding visual perspective, flashbulb memories showed lower scores than NDE (V = 162.5, p < 0.001) and autobiographical memories (V = 4.5, p < 0.001) indicating that they were less susceptible to be remembered from a first-person perspective. Greyson, B. "*, The best evidence for reincarnation, he thought, are the number of doi: 10.1097/00005053-198306000-00007, Greyson, B. cities are in northern India. The believer thinks the two-year-old meant: "I but questioning children is especially tricky. "unsolved." Fantasy proneness correlates with the intensity of near-death experience. The rest of Stevenson's cases, according to Thomason, involved Near Death Stud. We have already noted that he was no expert on the problems of Even the best of it is open to alternative interpretations, and one can only say "that was me." Emotion 10, 627639. Near Death Stud. HC: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing original draft, writing review and editing, and visualization. In 1961, he Characteristics of memories for near-death experiences.