Sorry for the length of this post, but....
Paul Smith does a good job describing his recollectios of the development of the concepts around RV by Ingo Swann, Hal Puthoff, Ed May, Russell Targ and others in the early years of the government sponsored program.
I posted a quote in the "Matrix Postulate" thread regarding The Matrix . He later in that same chapter notes that the concepts presented are only models, though the best models available and models that have successfully been worked from. Considering that, and the fact that these models of Matrix, aperature, and signal line were developed by the big dogs of RV, and because "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", we are tempted to NOT develop new models using the same observed phenomenon.
But I will step out on a limb here and invite new models for 2 reasons. 1) New models may provide some new conceptual options the older models do not, and may lead to more variable correlations that do not fit in the present models., and 2) they may dig up new relationships that DO fit in the present models but have not been exposed in experimention on the present models because they are not given high priority in the present model. Research in the RV field is extremely limited, so grant dollars are spent mostly on studying the variables central to the present model.
Mr. Smith discusses the limitations of the signal line theory so I won't go into it here except to say that much research went into finding some medium to carry data and none was found. They sheilded the RVers from every possible wavelength of electromagnetic energy, and RV was unaffected.
Again, I recommend Dr. Christine Hardy's book Networks of Meaning because she talks about the information matrix as it relates to how our minds operate. She discusses how the things in our minds are related to each other by associations of meaning. So when your mind "free associates", it moves from object to object via shared properties of the two objects. Any property of a thing can connect to any other thing that shares that property, whether it is some physical attribute, time, emotion or anything else our minds can percieve as a quality of an object. Dr. Hardy refers mental objects as "semantic constellations".
So when RVing, we perceive a red... a red apple when the target is a shiney red car. But why didn't we just get the red car? I think that is because the property red was "energized" in our minds, maybe we had just seen a red chair or something else red and significant in some way. In either case, red was ready to be seen by our mind. Also, for whatever reason, "apple" was more available to be perceived than "car". Maybe we had an apple for a snack recently, or maybe we grew up on an apple farm, or had been sitting working on our Apple computer all day. For whatever reason, the object "apple" had more attention grabbing energy than any other association to the property of "red", so when we RV'd red, the next most energetic or noticable quality associated with "Red" was "car". When we start free associating from there in RV, we often get elaborate, pleasing imaginings that are only mildly related to the target. We sometimes call this AOL or squirrel chasing in RV lingo, though those definitions don't fit exactly.
Through intent, we may go back to RVing and get other qualities of the red car, such as seeing a visual of a circle, related to the tires. We may see Dorothy, the Tin-woodsman and the Scarecrow skipping down the yellow brick road, because in our minds, the "road" relates to car. We get what we get because these shared properties with "red car" are more "energized". As we proceed through CRV, we start to energize the many disparate properties of "red car" through intention and conscious attention, and the true target picture gets more clear.
I think different levels of consciousness, such as waking consciousness and the subconscious, have different "sensors" for perceiving properties of things. The ego-driven waking consciousness seems to energize properties due to their connections to some goal the conscious mind has. The subconscious does not seem to share that perceptive priority, and to the extent we RV in data and then let the conscious mind take over attention, the RV session gets sidetracked from the target. We try to distract the waking mind through CRV or just shut that bad-boy down in ERV, to get at remote viewing data. But through intention and importance communicated to the subconscious, the attention can be drawn to target data, and as we get ahold of one property of the target after another as we work through the stages of CRV, then the whole and clearer picture evolves. The picture that evolves may still contain related properties that are inaccurate for whatever reason, but when the picture becomes "good enough for government work", or filled in enough to be useful, then its deemed...well... "good enough for government work".
From my observations, the subconscious mind seems to perceive properties of the target differently from the waking mind, as I have said. It seems that social relationships between participants in the RV experience seem to energize properties of the target, especially future relationships. Since time is not a factor in The Matrix the significance of the RV event on future relationship development seems to "energize" properties of the target so the RV event will take place. Also, properties that bring people together, even if they are not related to the target, also get noticed more easily. This contributes to noise in the RVing session too. But if a property of the target is significant for the relationship of the individuals involved in the RV experience/event, then they seem to be more easily viewed in the RV session.
This explains why "beginners luck" occurs. This explains why new couples have more success in PSI tasks. This explains the "goats and sheep" phenomenon, and the "experimenter" effect. It also explains a lot more too, so just look over the research and the anecdotes and see how it fits....or more importantly to me... how it does NOT fit.
I look forward to hearing comments on this slightly different model of PSI.