There are two basic types of functioning that are generally considered under the broad heading of psychic or paranormal abilities. These are classically known as extrasensory perception (ESP), in which one acquires information through unexplainable means and psychokinesis, in which one physically manipulates the environment through unknown means. The SAIC laboratory uses more neutral terminology for these abilities; they refer to ESP as anomalous cognition (AC) and to psychokinesis as anomalous perturbation (AP). The vast majority of work at both SRI and SAIC investigated anomalous cognition rather than anomalous perturbation, although there was some work done on the latter.
Anomalous cognition is further divided into categories based on the apparent source of the information. If it appears to come from another person, the ability is called telepathy, if it appears to come in real time but not from another person it is called clairvoyance and if the information could have only been obtained by knowledge of the future, it is called precognition.
It is possible to identify apparent precognition by asking someone to describe something for which the correct answer isn't known until later in time. It is more difficult to rule out precognition in experiments attempting to test telepathy or clairvoyance, since it is almost impossible to be sure that subjects in such experiments never see the correct answer at some point in the future. These distinctions are important in the quest to identify an explanation for anomalous cognition, but do not bear on the existence issue.
The vast majority of anomalous cognition experiments at both SRI and SAIC used a technique known as remote viewing. In these experiments, a viewer attempts to draw or describe (or both) a target location, photograph, object or short video segment. All known channels for receiving the information are blocked. Sometimes the viewer is assisted by a monitor who asks the viewer questions; of course in such cases the monitor is blind to the answer as well. Sometimes a sender is looking at the target during the session, but sometimes there is no sender. In most cases the viewer eventually receives feedback in which he or she learns the correct answer, thus making it difficult to rule out precognition as the explanation for positive results, whether or not there was a sender.
Most anomalous cognition experiments at SRI and SAIC were of the free-response type, in which viewers were simply asked to describe the target. In contrast, a forced-choice experiment is one in which there are a small number of known choices from which the viewer must choose. The latter may be easier to evaluate statistically but they have been traditionally less successful than free-response experiments. Some of the work done at SAIC addresses potential explanations for why that might be the case.