The Instruments

The PCI (Pekala, 1982/1991) is a 53-item self-report inventory that maps 12 major and 14 minor dimensions of subjective experience.  The client completes the 53-item PCI retrospectively in reference to a short stimulus condition.   The 12 major dimensions (with 14 minor dimensions in parentheses) of phenomenological experience assessed by the PCI include:  altered state of awareness, altered experience (body image, time sense, perception, unusual meaning), volitional control, self-awareness, rationality, internal dialogue, positive affect (joy, sexual excitement, love), negative affect (anger, sadness, fear), imagery (amount and vividness), attention (direction and absorption), memory and arousal.

Whereas the PCI was developed to map consciousness in general, the DAQ (Pekala, 1985/1991) was developed to map attention in particular.  The DAQ consists of 40 items that map the following dimensions of subjective attentional experience:  flexibility, equanimity, detachment, perspicacity, locus, direction, one-pointedness, absorption, control, vigilance, density, and simultaneity.  The PCI and the DAQ were developed to quantify, statistically assess, and diagram various states of subjective conscious experience (Tart, 1972, 1975) such as:  hypnotism (Pekala, 1995a, 1995b; Pekala et al., 2006; Pekala & Kumar, 1984, 1987, 2000, 2007); fire-walking (Pekala & Ersek, 1992/93); altered states of consciousness such as an OBE within and NDE (Maitz & Pekala, 1991); and even different types of meditation (Hageman, 2008). I believe the methodology can be used to assess any short stimulus condition (the condition does not need to be an altered state of consciousness) as to the phenomenological processes activated during that stimulus condition from both an intensity and pattern perspective.

The methodological and statistical manual for scoring and using the PCI and the DAQ is my book, Quantifying consciousness: An empirical approach (1991). The book lays the methodological and statistical foundation for mapping and quantifying subjective consciousness and its various states.  It also goes into detail  concerning predecessor instruments to the PCI, the rationale for this approach, and how it was developed to operationalize Tart’s (1972) pattern approach to consciousness and (altered) states of consciousness (Tart, 1975).  The approach allows for consciousness and attention, and its dimensions and relationships among dimensions, to be measured, diagrammed and statistically assessed.  Its potential for better understanding consciousness, the mind, and its various states, I believe to be great.  Future research will hopefully support this expectation.