If you can eerily detect the presence of unseen people or have prescient knowledge of danger, it may be disappointing to learn that scientists have ruled out the existence of a “sixth sense”.

A year-long University of Melbourne study, published in the journal Plos One, found that people could reliably detect a change in their surroundings, even if they could not accurately describe what that change was.

However, the research concluded that this was not due to any kind of supernatural ability, but rather from cues picked up from more conventional senses such as sight.

Researchers presented pairs of photos of a woman to 48 different people. In some cases, the appearance of the woman in one of the pictures would be different – such as a different hairstyle or the presence of glasses.

The pictures were shown to the subjects for 1.5 seconds with a one-second break between them. The people were then asked whether a change had occurred and, if so, to pick the change from a list of nine possibilities.

The results showed that while the subjects could “sense” a change had occurred, they could not verbalise what it was. While this confirmed to some subjects that they possessed a sixth sense, or extrasensory perception, researchers said it showed there was no such ability.

“What people were doing was processing information that they couldn’t verbalise but were picking up on, often subconsciously,” Dr Piers Howe from the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences told Guardian Australia. “It’s a bit like an abstract painting – it doesn’t depict anything you can label, such as a sea or mountain, but you can still get a lot of information on what’s going on.

“The information was enough to tell them that a change had occurred, because they could tell the picture was more crowded, but not enough to say what that change was. Many believed they had a quasi-magical ability even though we had set them up.”

Howe said he started the research after one his students told him that she possessed a sixth sense.

“She said she had the ability to tell if something bad had happened to someone just by looking at them,” he said.

“She said she knew an acquaintance had been in a car accident even though he had no visual markings or injuries. I told her that she may not have been able to verbally label the markings, but she picked up on them and wasn’t consciously aware of them.

“We receive a lot of information we don’t or can’t verbalise. For example, this often happens when something disappears. If my children are being very noisy in the next room and then they are suddenly quiet, I don’t realise that what has startled me is the lack of noise. I’m alerted to that subconsciously and go into the room and find that they are being quiet because they are doing something naughty. That’s not a sixth sense.”

ESP, a broad term that encompasses everything from telepathy to clairvoyance, has been studied intermittently since the 1930s, but Howe said his research was the first to show that people can sense information they cannot verbalise.

People who believe they possess a sixth sense may take a little more convincing they are wrong, however.

“It’s hard to stop believing in something that’s clearly self-evident to you,” Howe said.

“I think scientists will believe me because they believe in rational analysis but I’m not sure the general public will. I don’t even think my mum will.”