A new study debunks the "sixth sense" myth, claiming that what people think is an extrasensory perception is actually their conscious mind "failing to catch up" with their perception, the International Business Times reported.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia found that people could reliably sense when a change had occurred, even when they could not see exactly what had changed and this is not due to a sixth sense or the ability to acquire or "see" information about the future through means other than the five senses.

"People are correct in believing that they have an ability to sense changes in their environment even when they cannot verbally identify what those changes are," study co-author Dr. Piers Howe, a psychology professor at the University of Melbourne, told The Huffington Post. "It is just that this ability is not a quasi-magical sixth sense. It can be explained in terms of known visual processes."

For the study, researchers gave 10 men and women between the ages of 19 and 43 brief glimpses of "before" and "after" photos of the same woman. In some cases, the "after" photo was the same as the "before." In others, one of the woman's features was altered, The Huffington Post reported.

Researchers then asked the study participants whether the photos were the same or different. If they noticed a change, they were asked to identify the change from a list of options. The cohort picked up on the altered

Researchers said the cohort picked up on the altered photos around 73 percent of the time. But in some of these trials, even though they detected a change, they could not pinpoint the difference.

"We were able to show that while observers could reliably sense changes that they could not visually identify, this ability was not due to extrasensory perception or a sixth sense," Piers said in a statement.

Researchers said this resulted in the observer "feeling" or "sensing" - usually associated with a sixth sense - that a change had occurred without being able to visually identify the change.

The study was recently published in the journal journal PLOS ONE.