Study shows "Spiritual" effects of mushrooms last a year

The findings may offer a way to help treat extremely anxious and depressed patients, or people with addictions, said Griffiths, whose work was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence," Griffiths said.

WIDELY OUTLAWED

While psilocybin is widely outlawed, many U.S. states and some countries overlook its use by indigenous people in religious ceremonies.

Supervision of its use is key, the researchers noted.

"While some of our subjects reported strong fear or anxiety for a portion of their day-long psilocybin sessions, none reported any lingering harmful effects, and we didn't observe any clinical evidence of harm," Griffiths said.

Hallucinogens should not be given to people at risk for psychosis or certain other serious mental disorders, the researchers said.

But Griffiths stressed that even those who reported fear said a year later they had no permanent negative effects.

Of the volunteers who took the one-day test of psilocybin, 22 of the 36 had a "complete" mystical experience, based on a detailed questionnaire.

Griffiths said 21 continued to rate highly on this standardized scale 14 months later.

"Even at the 14-month follow-up, 58 percent of 36 volunteers rated the experience on the psilocybin session as among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives and 67 percent rated it among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives," the researchers said.

The report included some comments from the volunteers.

"Surrender is intensely powerful. To 'let go' and become enveloped in the beauty of -- in this case music -- was enormously spiritual," one volunteer said.

The essay will be scored by experienced and trained high school and college teachers. Each essay will be scored by two people who won't know each other's score. They won't know the student's identity or school either. Each reader will give the essay a score from 1 to 6 (6 is the highest score) based on the following scoring guide.

Please note that the essay images seen by readers for scoring purposes are clearer than the images we can display for students and institutions on our website.

SCORE OF 6

An essay in this category demonstrates clear and consistent mastery, although it may have a few minor errors. A typical essay

• effectively and insightfully develops a point of view on the issue and demonstrates outstanding critical thinking, using clearly appropriate examples, reasons, and other evidence to support its position


• is well organized and clearly focused, demonstrating clear coherence and smooth progression of ideas


• exhibits skillful use of language, using a varied, accurate, and apt vocabulary


• demonstrates meaningful variety in sentence structure


• is free of most errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics

Subgroup Differences in Mathematics, Critical Reading, and Writing

ESL: Students for whom English is a second language increased 5 points in critical reading to 467 and 2 points in mathematics to 523. They scored 469 on the writing section. Although this is 28 points below the mean for all students, it is a smaller gap than these students experienced for critical reading. More ESL students took the SAT this year.

Race/Ethnicity: African American and Mexican American critical reading scores, 434 and 454 respectively, improved over last year by one point each. American Indian mathematics scores improved by 1 point to 494 and Mexican American mathematics scores improved over last year by 2 points to 465. The largest declines in critical reading were seen among White and Other Hispanic students, both down by 5 points to 527 and 458, respectively.

Student Performance on Essay

The essay asked students to respond to a point of view on an issue through an original first-draft format and support a position with reasoning and examples taken from reading, studies, experience, or observations. Two readers scored each essay, each reader providing a score from 1 to 6 for a maximum score of 12. The average essay score was 7.2 out of 12. Reader agreement on essay scores was very high. Nearly 97 percent of readers exactly agreed on scores or differed by only one point. Only 3 percent of essays needed to be resolved by a third reader. The College Board performed analyses on 6,498 essays randomly sampled from the March 2005 through January 2006 SAT administrations. Results demonstrated that longer essays were more likely to receive higher scores; however, the relationship between length and score was only moderate (.62). Eighty-four percent of essay responses reached the second page. Half the essays used the first-person voice. Score differences were slight, with first-person-voice essays averaging a score of 6.9, compared to 7.2 for those not using first-person voice. Only 8 percent of essays were identified as using the typical five-paragraph essay structure. Fifty-three percent of essays used academic examples (historical, literary/art/music, science or technology, and current events or politics) and 52 percent of essays included some type of personal experience as supporting evidence. Some students used both types of examples.

Given that, some have wondered why the SAT essay training and practice test samples typically show high correlations between length and score.

There is a simple explanation for this correlation. The College Board's goal in selecting samples for initial training, and for practice tests, is to find essays at each score point that demonstrate all the criteria of that score point. And one important criterion is development. According to our published Scoring Guide, a "typical" 6 essay "effectively and insightfully develops a point of view on the issue... using clearly appropriate examples, reasons, and other evidence to support its position." These essays tend to be robustly developed, and are among the longest essays in our sample sets. But a "typical" 6 essay also "exhibits skillful use of language," "demonstrates meaningful variety in sentence structure," and "is free of most errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics." Training 6s are usually longer than training essays at other score points, but they are also more skillfully written across the entire range of criteria than essays at other score points.

Compare a training 6 to a training 3. An essay selected as a sample 3 will be "limited in its organization or focus, or may demonstrate some lapses in coherence or progression of ideas"; it will have problems in development, which, in practice, almost always means that it is shorter. But sample 3s also "sometimes use weak vocabulary or inappropriate word choice," "lack variety or demonstrate problems in sentence structure," or "contain an accumulation of errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics." Training 3s are often shorter than training 4s, 5s, and 6s, but they are also problematic in other ways that all readers should recognize.

The College Board selects these typical essays for training because we want teachers and students to be clear about the level of quality that we associate with each score point. In live scoring, of course, we see typical and atypical essays; some shorter essays will still "insightfully and effectively develop a point of view on an issue," while some longer essays will "sometimes use weak vocabulary or inappropriate word choice." But that is the reason the College Board only employs experienced classroom teachers (with a minimum of three years' experience) as scorers. We trust that teachers who have years of experience reading student writing will be able, upon grasping the clear distinctions between typical essays, to perform the trickier task of scoring the atypical essays. Results from the March administration suggest that our confidence is justified.