Neuromagic Flashcards
Neuromagic
scientific study of the experience and performance of stage magic: to explain underlying psychological principles of perception, attention and cognition, to gain a greater understanding of the neural correlates of those principles, apply those principles to the development of new stage illusions
Misdirection
drawing the audience’s attention away from the “method” (secret behind effect) and towards the effect (what spectator perceives)
eg. overt, covert misdirection
Overt Misdirection
observer’s gaze is directed away from the process
Covert Misdirection
observer’s attention is directed away from the process (eg. change blindness, inattentional blindness)
Physical Misdirection
directs attention via properties of a stimulus (bottom-up/exogenous control), such as movement, contrast and novelty and magician’s eye gaze / body posture
Eg. disappearing objects magic trick depends on magicians eye gaze
Psychological Misdirection
directs attention via beliefs and expectations (top-down/endogenous control), such as secret props, suspense and false solutions.
Eg. in French Drop the magician’s actions must appear natural to avoid arousing suspicion
Optical Illusion
false perception created by manipulation of the physical properties of light via intricate combinations of mirror and perspective
Eg. Pepper’s ghost: an illusory transparent object is seen, created by projecting an image onto a pane of glass
Visual Illusion
subjective visual percept of a stimulus that does not match objective reality
Eg. spoon bending
Eg. retention of vision vanish: coin is perceived to be placed in one hand but it remains in the other, removed object will still be perceived for ~100ms due to neural after-discharge
Eg. Tri-Zonal Space Warper: adapting to a rotating stimulus subsequently makes stationary stimuli seem to warp and move, application of motion aftereffect, due to adaptation of neurons sensitive to motion in a particular direction
Cognitive Illusion
false perception created by manipulating high-level processes like attention, memory and causal inference (drawing conclusions about apparent cause and effect)
Eg. change blindness, Inattentional blindness, Choice Blindness, Illusory correlation
Change Blindness
when a visual stimulus undergoes a change, observers often fail to notice the change
Eg. Richard Wiseman’s Colour changing card trick: requires attention to stimuli and memory comparison, often occurs when stimuli are visually interrupted
Inattentional Blindness
When observers are focused on an object or event they often fail to notice other salient or distinctive stimuli
Eg. Barnhart / Goldlinger (2014): observers showed video of a coin being placed under a napkin, in a critical trial a string visibly pulls the coin from under one napkin to the other. Preview condition: three control trials (coin does not move) presented before critical trial (coin moves). Nonpreview condition: critical trial presented once. Observers asked where coin was now located, eye tracker used to record eye fixation locations. Inattentional blindness results: 18% missed the moving coin; no preview condition 55%. Supports perceptual load theory : preview condition left observers with more attention to detect the moving coing
Choice Blindness
When observers chose an item, but are later presented with a different item that is supposedly their chosen item, they often fail to notice the discrepancy
Eg. Hall et al (2010), invited shoppers to try two different jams and choose which one they preferred (eg. cinnamon-apple or grapefruit). Secretly switched the james using double sided containers. Immediately after choosing, observers were asked to sample their favorite and explain their choice, oly 33.3% of observes detected the switch, most confabulated to justify the outcome which was the opposite of their actual choice.
Illusory Correlation
believing that there is a relationship between two events when none actually exists.
Eg. Parris et al. (2009): observers watching videos while in fMRI. Magic condition: videos of magic tricks that violated cause-effect relationships (dissapearing coin). Surprise condition: videos of unexpected events (third hand steals the coin). Causal control condition: similar videos with no tricks or surprises (eg. coin does not disappear). Suprise condition produced greater activity in ACC, associated with detecting conflict/allocating attention. Magic condition produced greater activity in dorsolateral PFC in LH. DLPFC involved in detecting violations of causality
Forcing
an apparently free will choice is controlled by the magician
Eg. physical force, mental force
Physical Force
selection of a physical object is controlle dby physical manipulation
Eg. pulling one card from a deck which is made up of 52 A of Spades
