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Summary for those who are either in the UK and unwilling to use a proxy, or very short on attention span:

Your sensory mechanisms, like any other means of detecting anything, are less than perfect. Therefore you're going to get some false positives (thinking your phone is vibrating when it isn't) and/or some false negatives (not noticing when your phone really is vibrating).

It's possible to trade off between these by adjusting the threshold for detection. There's no reason why the optimal point (or the approximation to optimality that your brain actually chooses) should give no false positives; more likely it will give some false positives and some false negatives.

The end.

(This tradeoff occurs all over the place. One interesting example, due to Justin Barrett, is the suggestion that (1) one thing our brains are set up to detect is signs of agency -- something purposeful acting in our vicinity, and (2) it is generally better for us to be too sensitive (thinking there is a tiger hiding in the trees when there isn't really) than not sensitive enough (not noticing the tiger, and getting eaten). And that this is the mechanism underlying a lot of belief in the supernatural: we see something, have the feeling that someone or something must have made it that way on purpose, and on looking closer fail to find any good candidates ... and are then liable to conclude that something we can't directly detect made it so.)

> We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee.

seriously?

link via proxy: http://www.uswebproxy.com/index.php?q=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5iYmMuY2...

(I felt slightly dirty googling for a proxy - not something I've done in many years..)

I was weirdly annoyed by this actually, not sure why but as a British citizen I feel like I should/ am entitled to be able to view this content - especially seeing as when abroad I can still view the BBC new home page (albeit with ads)
Though if you leave the UK to view content the BBC will pay you a large severance fee...
I like to think they do this intentionally as a way of drawing attention to how absurd some of these rules are.
Cool article. Slightly OT, but one of the things I love about my Pebble is how I never miss the vibrations, nor imagine them when they're not there. When I had my phone set to ring, I often didn't hear it, and when I had it on silent and vibrate, I would get both misses (especially when bicycling or walking) and false alarms. I suspect that the wrist is more sensitive to vibrations, so with Pebble, it's easier for my brain not to screw this up.
The pebble is also a much smaller mass to move around so the motor has a bigger effect. I find it great also, especialy when I'm in a loud train station for example where you can't hear your ringer and would miss vibration when walking.
Second the "mass" problem. I didn't experience either misses or false alarms with the stupid phones I had before, but as my phone has been growing smarter and bigger, the vibration engine has turned into something that primarily makes noise :/ In fact, I hardly get "hits" any more :(
I'm trying to figure out what the Pebble does that makes it unavailable for phones that support the Bluetooth standard. My Windows Phone will pair with my car and even let me car read my incoming texts to me. It can do Bluetooth audio streaming (A2DP). It can do caller ID notifications over Bluetooth.

So why can it not work with a Pebble? Just because it can't run their app?

I'd never heard of it but tt was obvious that "Pebble" was a watch so I did a quick search... wow! That things looks amazing and I can already think of so many different things I could do with it (development-wise). Too bad I'd have to pre-order one instead of just ordering one right now. :(

I'm assuming you're happy with yours and would recommend it?

If you want a Pebble now, you'll be able to walk into a Best Buy and pick one up starting July 7th... there was a front-page article yesterday about it.

I am happy with mine. It's not life-changing, but it's very nice. I'm a little disappointed with its stability. There is a very fun Arkanoid clone for the Pebble[1], but a bug in it managed to not only lock up the game, but the whole watch until the charge ran out and I was able to recharge and reboot it.

[1] http://www.mypebblefaces.com/view?fID=1890&aName=justdoit&pa...

This sort of explains why I never felt phantom vibrations before, but after getting a new phone that has a weak vibration motor on it, I started imagining vibrations quite often. My body was just upping its sensitivity to account for the poor product design!
Dead link when viewed from the UK. In this case the URL is used to identify both the resource and the agent's location.
Link for UK readers: http://web.archive.org/liveweb/http://www.bbc.com/future/sto...
Not working for me (in the uk). I get "Sorry. We can't retrieve all the files we need to display that page. Please try again later."
Your wording is... Odd. BBC Future is just owned, and commercially run, by BBC Worldwide. Nothing to do with agent locations in the URL.
Fyi, from within the UK I get the following message:

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."

Personally I don't understand why the BBC specifically blocks UK users from free BBC Worldwide content, but I'm sure it makes sense to someone.

Apparently our license fee means we are entitled to not view the content.

Does that mean if I abstain from paying the fee I can view it?

No. I live in the UK, I don't pay the TV license, yet I still can't see the content of that page.
Does the page have adverts? That would probably be against the rules to show to people in the UK.

The real flaw is not having a redirect/transparently rendering the ad-free page.

No ads visible here (US.)

There is, however, a sidebar with Editor's Picks - presently topped by "Facebook vs Sperm."

The thing that really freaks me out about this is when it happens and my phone isn't even in my pocket! I do get these phantom vibrations remarkably frequently though, having had a vibrate-capable phone in my front right pocket for at least 8 years continuously (in daytime).
Something about the article doesn't sit right with me. It doesn't match with the way I feel my own thought processes working. My brain is not constantly considering all possible binary options. (Is my phone ringing in my left pocket? My right pocket? In each of the bajillion possible positions it might sit within that pocket?) My brain is just receiving sensory data, not constantly making such high-level judgements on it. If it passes a certain threshold, it goes to some higher thought process and I consciously take note of it. When I feel a phantom phone vibration, it's as if I'm actually experiencing the sensation, not as if some low-level part of my brain reached out into my frontal lobe and started sounding the "phone is vibrating" alarm.
There is a considerable body of evidence that "top-down" processes affect not only how sensory evidence is processed, but how the sensations themselves are experienced. In other words, high-level (but subconscious) neural "judgments" about the statistics of the world, actually influence how you perceive it. To put it still another way: sensations aren't simply passively experienced; they are actively constructed by the brain. Phantom phone vibration is, in many ways, just as "constructed" as real phone vibration.

Perceptual illusions provide one of the clearest ways to show that sensations reflect factors other than external stimuli. Here are two illusions, in different sensory modalities, that demonstrate the strong top-down influence of the brain on perception: The rubber hand illusion [1,2] and the McGurk effect [3,4]. The rubber hand illusion is particularly relevant because it is quite similar to the phantom phone vibration effect.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_hand_illusion

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQbygjG0RU

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0

EDIT: Here's an additional example to consider. People generally can't tickle themselves. The sensations are less strong when one touches oneself than when someone else does so. The explanation for this is that the brain automatically discounts sensations which arise as a result of self-motion. This has obvious advantages, namely that you don't constantly overstimulate yourself just in the process of moving through the world and are as such better able to attend to important externally generated stimuli.

>Something about the article doesn't sit right with me. It doesn't match with the way I feel my own thought processes working. My brain is not constantly considering all possible binary options.

A lot of neuro/cognitive science results are not "intuitive". You cannot tell how your brain works only by what it's consciously doing. The conscious part is just the tip of the iceberg of the processing the brain does and when.

>When I feel a phantom phone vibration, it's as if I'm actually experiencing the sensation, not as if some low-level part of my brain reached out into my frontal lobe and started sounding the "phone is vibrating" alarm.

And yet you're not "actually experiencing the sensation" -- in the sense that the real world state does not correspond to it. So it very much is like your brain started sounding the "phone is vibrating" alarm.

The brain can create whole experiences and illusions from nothing at all. Not only in dreams (obvious example), but also in experiments with sensory deprivation.

But that's not how your body works, is it?

Do you have to think consciously to yourself about moving your legs when you are walking? Even when you are running or dodging around complicated obstacles? Do you have to think about breathing? When you read are you thinking about the form of each letter and mentally going "ok, that's a T, oh, and that's an H, and hey here's an E, and then a space, that must be the word 'THE', ok, moving on..."? No, parts of your brain seamlessly and automatically do all that work for you, even though sometimes it can be complex work requiring your higher cognitive abilities. For example, if you are reading a hand written note and there is a word that is hard to read your brain fills in a huge amount of context and filters out and in potential possibilities and you can even consciously make a choice on which word is the most likely, but it can all happen quickly and smoothly with the workings that happen automatically doing so without you even being aware of them or how they operate.

That's how your brain works. It's not a matter of a simple machine with a little homunculus pulling at levers, it's a conscious part married to a whole lot of little unconscious parts. In order to learn something (like typing or reading or walking or rock climbing or driving or baseball) you need to use repetition to train up the unconscious parts.

Incidentally, it's also why techniques such as meditation are so powerful, because they allow you a degree of meta-control over your mind. Because not only are actions like walking or typing mostly unconscious so are things like mood and state of mind. But you can train yourself to control those aspects just as you can train yourself to walk a different way.

Your account isn't inconsistent with the article at all. The effects they are describing are all taking place below the level of conscious awareness. They are giving a high description of how psychologists understand an information processing system. "Experiencing a sensation", as you say, is actually quite a lot like the activation mechanism you contrast it to.

edit: a word.

There is more to this than what the article suggests, at least based on my experience with several different models of iphones and an old speaker phone on my desk.

What I find is that if the iphone is within, say, a few inches of the speaker phone periodically, with the phone not in use and the handset in the cradle, the speaker on the phone makes a sound which clearly is being triggered by something in the iphone (and I repeat this is across several models - original to 5). So it is possible that what is being picked up is the same type of signal that the speaker is picking up but by the part of our body that the phone is right next to.

Could that be https://www.google.com/search?q=gsm+speaker+interference

http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/05/27/why-do-speakers-ma...

I've been able to "predict" incoming calls for years, seconds before the phone rings, just by leaving my phone on top of my stereo. In college I won a few bets using GSM interference.
I remember many years ago an episode of a show (can't remember the name) with a firehouse. The dog in the firehouse was able to predict when an alarm came in before it sounded apparently I'm guessing by hearing some relay go off.
That's old regular interference.

I don't think it's applicable to the situation. For one, it has nothing to do with the vibrating part.

I had to stop using my phone's vibrate mode completely because I started to feel the phantom vibrations when I didn't even have my phone in the same room with me.

It's anecdotal but it didn't stop until I decided that my phone would never vibrate again. This is only moderately inconvenient to me as I also refuse unless I'm aware of a real window of availability to turn on a ringer at all.. If I answer my cell phone it's because I saw the display light up.

Call notification has always been broken for me. Most of the day I need to have the phone set to silent and I seldom notice the vibrator. A stronger vibrator won't cover the situation where the phone is in my jacket hanging on the wall or in another room.

However, since getting a Pebble I have reduced my missed call rate to 0%.

Just because there is an explanation for it doesn't mean it's not a scourge of the information age.
Wait, an article on the BBC website that can't be viewed in the UK?
I don't really have that. I only imagine vibrations when I'm sitting on a bike and the brakes or whatever vibrate the whole bike but I guess that doesn't count...
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK"

Does anyone have a UK link?