Alarm clock ring precognisance

Peanut

Hi there everyone,

This morning I woke up with a start at 8:14:59 am.
At 8:15:00 am my alarm clock started blaring the clarion call of another working day.

This happens quite a bit, and the delay is always about half a second.
I know it can be very difficult to judge time correctly when you're waking up, however I am 95% sure that I do in fact wake up a split second before the alarm goes off.

I usually don't take much notice of it because I've forgotten about it by the time I start commuting, but it just struck me again this morning so I thought I'd try to come up with some explanations, or see what other peoples' experiences are. This is what I've come up with.

1 - "I do in fact hear the alarm clock and this is what wakes me up."
Like I said I am pretty certain that this is not the case. It's difficult to be lucid at that time but this has happened so often that I am confident that this is not the case.

2 - "It's just a coincidence."
Consistently waking up within less than a second of the alarm going off makes me rule this one out.

3 - "The human body clock is amazingly accurate."
I suppose this could be a reasonable explanation, however it seems to defy belief considering a. I don't go to sleep at the same time every night, and b. I don't always set my alarm to the same time every morning. Perhaps it is possible though, and the unconcious mind is aware of the alarm time and the current time at any given moment.

4 - "The alarm going off is an event in the future which triggers a premonition in the sleeping state (which can be more receptive to such influences)."
I honestly think that this could be happening (along with #3 to an extent). I don't believe in a set future, however I am willing to accept that within the second before the alarm goes off, it should be the case that the probability of me hearing it in the next second increases.

In other words, the nearer you get to a scheduled event, the more likely it is to happen. In the minute or so before the alarm goes off, it might still be possible that any number of (hopefully unlikely!) things could happen that would prevent me hearing the alarm - the electricity might go off, the entire place could be destroyed by some natural or man-made disaster, or any number of other things could happen.

However, as the time to the event draws nearer, it becomes less and less likely that any other action, in the entire universe, can stop it from happening.

We might then be able to some how pick up on these things that are highly likely to happen to us in the future - in a split second the event becomes almost inevitable, and it triggers an ancient reaction somewhere in the psyche.

5 - "There is some other physical cue that the alarm is about to go off."
It could be that the alarm ring is proceeded by some other sound or electrical activity that you can somehow sense before the main alarm goes off, but in terms of an audible cue, I don't think this is the case.

6 - "There's some other explanation for it..."
I'm sure I've probably missed some other (mundane!) reasons.

Apologies for the long and winding post :rolleyes: but like I said, would appreciate if anyone has any thoughts on it.

Doper Than U

5 - "There is some other physical cue that the alarm is about to go off."
It could be that the alarm ring is proceeded by some other sound or electrical activity that you can somehow sense before the main alarm goes off, but in terms of an audible cue, I don't think this is the case.

I'd be willing to bet that's the reason.

garthv

Yeh i get that too, i also have a tendency to look at my fone about 3 seconds beofre i get a text message.....odd alright

Peanut

Doper Than U wrote:

I'd be willing to bet that's the reason.

Yeah actually I've just found out there is another alarm in the house that goes off 45 mins earlier, so that could be used to shorten the interval that you would need to time. Still to get it within 1 second accuracy over 45 mins you need to count 2700 seconds without losing time. In your sleep.

I've put forward the alarm a few mins as a little experiment so I'll try to see what happens

Capt'n Midnight

It might also do with perception and memory. A bit like Deja Vu. Your consciousness doesn't run in real time , "now" is blurred over a few seconds. So part of you hears the clock ring and another part hasn't see it yet or something

po0k

body clock

Peanut

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

It might also do with perception and memory. A bit like Deja Vu. Your consciousness doesn't run in real time , "now" is blurred over a few seconds. So part of you hears the clock ring and another part hasn't see it yet or something

Yep I thought of that already and it's certainly true in the morning, perception of time is pretty screwed up. However I am almost (almost!) certain that I do perceive the brief silence before the alarm starts, which I think rules that out.
I'm more inclined to think it's the body clock now as SyxPak says, however still not entirely happy that the mystery is solved

magnumlady

I always wake up about 5 minutes before my alarm goes off and I'm convinced its just my body clock as it happens on the days when I don't even set the alarm, its a pain!

bombidol

that stuff always happens to me, looking at the phone before a message arrives and waking up a few seconds before the alarm goes off. Im willing to bet its something electrical

Goodshape

Body clock I reckon. This happens to me so much I no longer bother with an alarm clock, and still wake up at 8:30 every morning (and still go back to sleep for two hours more!).

Give it a shot - no alarm clock tomorrow, see if you still wake up on time.

themole

i almost always wake up 10-15 mins before my alarm goes off, this is body clock. within a second, not a chance of this being bodyclock.

most likely a relay in the clock which makes a click before the alarm sounds. i had this in an hifi i used as an alarm. i wouldn't hear the click, but wouldwake up before the alarm to hear it starting.

but if i was already awake before the alarm i could hear the click. so what
happened was that he click was waking me up, but i didn't register it.

as far as the phone goes, there will be an increase in power input/output when the phone is receiving a message, which you can sometimes notice. there will then be a slight delay until the phone has receive the full message and then notifies you with a ring etc

this also happens periodically when the phone send a still alive message to the network, ever think you got a message and check your phone to see you didn't get one? , thats prob the cause.

stevenmu

I was inclined first of all to think body clock, I tend to already be waking up when my alarm clock goes off, and if it doesn't for some reason I wake up anyway. You do mention though that it's not always set for the same time. Depending on the type of alarm clock there may well be some kind of cue before it rings.

Other than that I don't see why it couldn't be some form of precognisance. The Laboratories for Fundamental Research (http://www.lfr.org/) has done a study indicating that people can react to an event before it happens. They hook them up to devices to monitor their galvonic skin response and then play beeps at random noises. They monitored changes in the galvonic skin response in people just before the beep is played, I think it was generally within a second prior to the beep or that kind of time frame anyway.

Stark

I'm inclined to go with Captn' Midnight. An "instant" in time from a human conciousness is approximately one second. Some people attribute this to neural processing delays, others attribute this to the window we place over the world in order to function. As in we actually perceive about a half a second into the past and a half a second into the future.

Either way, that's probably what's causing you to feel you preconceive the alarm ringing about a half a second before it actually happens. I always get the same feeling, I'd be in a dream and I'd think "**** alarm clock's about to go off" and it does.

I notice also that my alarm clock makes a click sound about a second before it actually goes off. You could be highly tuned to this. Or you could be tuned to the electrical activity that precedes the alarm clock ringing as another poster said. People are very sensitive to electrical activity when they sleep. I know one person who can't have anything electrical in his bedroom, cd players etc. and especially a mobile phone as he finds it interrupts his sleep cycle.

Zillah

Yeah my clock always did that classic **click** /tiny pause/ BEEP BEEP BEEP

Peanut

Stark wrote:

I'm inclined to go with Captn' Midnight. An "instant" in time from a human conciousness is approximately one second. Some people attribute this to neural processing delays, others attribute this to the window we place over the world in order to function. As in we actually perceive about a half a second into the past and a half a second into the future.

A quantum of conciousness so to speak.

Ok well I've got lots of things to try, my experiment this morning didn't work
particulary well but anyway

themole wrote:

most likely a relay in the clock which makes a click before the alarm sounds. i had this in an hifi i used as an alarm. i wouldn't hear the click, but wouldwake up before the alarm to hear it starting.

This one should be easy enough to check out..

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Capt'n Midnight

Stark wrote:

I notice also that my alarm clock makes a click sound about a second before it actually goes off.

Judging by the sound that alarm clock radios make (the old ones - Wah Wah Wah WAAAAAAAHHHHH) the people who design them must be evil and looked for the worst sound. I've imagined a room somewhere filled with lab animals where they subject them to the noise in LD50 tests. Once you believe that then imaging that they would move to more subtle forms of tortue like making a click a couple of seconds before you wake is easy.

You could get a usb camera and get it to record you and the clock from say about 15 minutes before the clock goes off to see if it does make a sound, though you'd need a long USB cable in case the PC noise wakes you up.

Peanut

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Judging by the sound that alarm clock radios make (the old ones - Wah Wah Wah WAAAAAAAHHHHH) the people who design them must be evil and looked for the worst sound. I've imagined a room somewhere filled with lab animals where they subject them to the noise in LD50 tests. Once you believe that then imaging that they would move to more subtle forms of tortue like making a click a couple of seconds before you wake is easy.

You could get a usb camera and get it to record you and the clock from say about 15 minutes before the clock goes off to see if it does make a sound, though you'd need a long USB cable in case the PC noise wakes you up.

hmmm interesting idea. I was going more in the direction of lab animals myself but whatever is good

ISAW

Great post . great questions and great analysis.

Peanut wrote:

Hi there everyone,

This morning I woke up with a start at 8:14:59 am.
At 8:15:00 am my alarm clock started blaring the clarion call of another working day.

I am sceptical about this claim. I mean you are REALLY sure that you were fully awake considered the time, looked at the clock, considered the whole clock thing and rechecked the clock all in ONE SECOND?

Couldnt you have been waking up for say ten of fifteen minutes? that would lead us into an entirely different senario.

This happens quite a bit, and the delay is always about half a se
cond.

here it is again.
I really have problems with this. do you wake up get out a stopwatch and tiem it? Does someone else? This CAN be tested. Sensors can be put on your head for brain activity. there are standard signs of sleep and waking. By the way there are LEVELS of sleep. It is not on/off. What I mean is sleep is not asleep or awake. the "asleep" bit has I believe five measurable levels which all have a brain activity signature. Rapid Eye Movement REM also occurs in stage five. That is dream sleep.

I know it can be very difficult to judge time correctly when you're waking up, however I am 95% sure that I do in fact wake up a split second before the alarm goes off.

I like your point that it can be measured but the figures you put on it have no meaning.
Your 95 is a hand waving number. If you were really 95 percent sure you would be admitting that one time in twenty you do not know whether you are waking up one second befoer you clock goes off but the other 19 times you DO know. so back to my above point. How do you know 19 times out of 20?

I usually don't take much notice of it because I've forgotten about it by the time I start commuting, but it just struck me again this morning so I thought I'd try to come up with some explanations, or see what other peoples' experiences are. This is what I've come up with.

this is why i love this post. while you have not defined exactly what the phenomon is we can all see what you are trying to look into. there is a vague definition. But more importantly you go about looking for explanations!

1 - "I do in fact hear the alarm clock and this is what wakes me up."
Like I said I am pretty certain that this is not the case. It's difficult to be lucid at that time but this has happened so often that I am confident that this is not the case.
[/qoute]

How are you certain this is not the case? I remember this was taken up by the straight dope about 15 years ago.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_300.html

2 - "It's just a coincidence."
Consistently waking up within less than a second of the alarm going off makes me rule this one out.

But as i stated without someone else measuring your brain activity you dont really know when you are waking up.

3 - "The human body clock is amazingly accurate."
I suppose this could be a reasonable explanation, however it seems to defy belief considering a. I don't go to sleep at the same time every night, and b. I don't always set my alarm to the same time every morning. Perhaps it is possible though, and the unconcious mind is aware of the alarm time and the current time at any given moment.

I believe this is also a good esplaination. If you dont really know it is one second and may be up to ten minuted befoer you might be sort of waking up TWICE! You stated above you forget about it. In the same way people forget about dreams. You could wake up and take some cue (a noise - common with mechanical clocks but it might be environmental a coffee maker downstrairs, a factory whistle). It might even be looking at the clock Then you go back asleep and forget you were awake. Much of this could be tested by putting on a video camera. To me the best explainations are ones we can measure or test. I mean even if someone said it is your guardian Angel thats fine but how does one test that?

Then again you could apply for Big Brother and all your friends could record you

4 - "The alarm going off is an event in the future which triggers a premonition in the sleeping state (which can be more receptive to such influences)."
I honestly think that this could be happening (along with #3 to an extent). I don't believe in a set future, however I am willing to accept that within the second before the alarm goes off, it should be the case that the probability of me hearing it in the next second increases.

we are back to the how do you know it is the second before. Bt this has a problem. It is called causality. There are theories on this . Bell I think worked on it. But noone has ever measured anything going back in time. It seems one can travel forward faster but not backward. It is a very heavy subject but if you pop over to the skeptics forum I am sure you will find someone to discuss it. If I have time I will.
Otherwise try searching the web under EPR paradox for Einstein podborsky Rosen (excuse spelling) Aspect experiment (Alain Aspect - easy to understand impossible to explain) Bells inequality theorem.

In other words, the nearer you get to a scheduled event, the more likely it is to happen.

Ah! but isnt this only in hindsight? surely in hindsight the probability of it happening is one? Since it happened!If you mean the probability increases because the problem space reduces then I agree with you. In other words the alarm going off is one possibility. Others include the clock been taken to say Mars. But up to a few seconds before it is impossible to take it to Mars so the possibility of it ringing is still only one but the miriad possibility of anything else are smaller so the probability is (say making up numbers) one in a million rather than one in a thousand trillion ten minutes before.

In the minute or so before the alarm goes off, it might still be possible that any number of (hopefully unlikely!) things could happen that would prevent me hearing the alarm - the electricity might go off, the entire place could be destroyed by some natural or man-made disaster, or any number of other things could happen.

Oops! thats what you did state! Sorry. anyway that is called reducing the problem space. this is important because a fake psychic will try to increase the problem space.

Say for example I claim I can start watches. I am aware some old watches in drawers start when shaken. Say one watch in ten thousand people asked to do it goes home does it and gets a positive result. Now all i need is ten thousand tries to get a positive result. So I go on a popular TV show. I get a million vievers. thats 100 times the result . a hundred people get their watch going. Most of them call up. 100 calls is a lot for a TV show to get on one subject even one with a million people watching. But I can do better! I claim I can do it at a particular time. But the problem space starts to increase. first although I said hold it in your hand some people went upstairs AFTER the event sone BEFORE. Some started seconds before ar after ( a satellite broadcast may even have a few seconds delay) Weeks later the callers include people whose watches STOPPED rather than started as I claimed. Then CLOCKS come into it. Then watches that started a week later day at the same time!

To me half of your point four is interesting the other half is unproven.

5 - "There is some other physical cue that the alarm is about to go off."
It could be that the alarm ring is proceeded by some other sound or electrical activity that you can somehow sense before the main alarm goes off, but in terms of an audible cue, I don't think this is the case.

No but Cecil Adams does in his straight dope answer. But if you dont thnk it is the case how would you measure that?

6 - "There's some other explanation for it..."
I'm sure I've probably missed some other (mundane!) reasons.

I think you have covered most reasonable explaination. Of course it could be a psychic ability to tell the time but that though difficult also can be measured. I think some french psychologist got people to live in a cave for a month and found they adjusted to a 25 hour day. Hey there is ANOTHER idea for a reality TV show

Apologies for the long and winding post :rolleyes: but like I said, would appreciate if anyone has any thoughts on it.

I think your post and your open minded analysis were really interesting.

open_book

I happen to believe there is, like a computer, always a real time clock ticking away, timing things, etc. the mind is capable of so much, our conscious has no idea. Ever at the traffic lights and you just know they are about to change to go, or have bread in the toaster(almost said toast) and just 'feel' its about to pop. Its weird aswell the phone thing, whenever I'm about to text a certain mate of mine, could be a space of 3 days since last text, a text from him comes in(this doesnt ALWAYS happen but alot). The alarm clock thing, again I think its that your mind can actually tell the time in the subconscious, if only we could blend the two-possibilities are endless...

Shabadu

I find that even if I don't have my alarm set at the weekend I'll still wake up a minute or two before it was due to go off.

ISAW

open_book wrote:

I happen to believe there is, like a computer, always a real time clock ticking away, timing things, etc. the mind is capable of so much, our conscious has no idea. Ever at the traffic lights and you just know they are about to change to go, or have bread in the toaster(almost said toast) and just 'feel' its about to pop. Its weird aswell the phone thing, whenever I'm about to text a certain mate of mine, could be a space of 3 days since last text, a text from him comes in(this doesnt ALWAYS happen but alot). The alarm clock thing, again I think its that your mind can actually tell the time in the subconscious, if only we could blend the two-possibilities are endless...

I both agree and disagree. I believe studies have been done which show natural rythms over time. As regards shorter periods of minutes or seconds, track atheletes or cyclists might be "trained" into it to some degree.

But as regards the old chestnut of someone ringing when you think of them. There are in sampling theory errors called in the US type A and type B or in europe false negatives and false positives. One has to consider these. But in the phone case you might well remember the "hits" and forget the misses. I mean how many did your friend ring when you were NOT thinking of them? We dont tend to remember that. Adn did they ring just as you thought of them? Or five minutes later? Or seven minutes later?

Capt'n Midnight

ISAW wrote:

I mean how many did your friend ring when you were NOT thinking of them? We dont tend to remember that. Adn did they ring just as you thought of them? Or five minutes later? Or seven minutes later?

Or as Stephen Fry pointed out , wouldn't it be weird if your friends NEVER rang when you were thinking about them..

open_book

trained natural rythms - this makes some sense to me, kind of like when a beat is in your head and it keeps going until you hear a different one. or if a song goes off its still playing in your head even if its not in your current thought. Yes this is alot clearer for me now, its a kind of anxiousness as you are expecting something to tie in and theres a sort of empty hole when it doesnt but you just push on and forget about it.
i'm very hungover at the moment by the way so what Ive just written probably makes no logical sense.