Neuromagic LOs Flashcards
Give a brief history of the scientific understanding of stage magic
Alfred Binet (1894): La Psychologie de la Prestidigitation: recruited 5-stage magicians, filmed their performances and analyzed them frame-by-frame. Concluded that “illusion of each trick is not merely the result of one single case, but of many, so insignificant that to perceive them would be quite as difficult as to count with the naked eye the grains of sand on the seashore”
Joseph Jastrow (1897): did experiments with world-famous conjurers. Published articles on the psychology of magic. Stated “there was much to interest the student of science in the elaborate performances of the prestidigitateur and the illusionist)
Norman Triplett (1900): The psychology of Conjuring Deceptions: Categorizes dozens of conjuring tricks into categories like optical illusions, tricks involving scientific principles, tricks involving unusual ability, tricks depending on large use of fixed mental habits in the audience.
Martinez-Conde and Macknik (2007) Magic of Consciousness Symposium: held in Las Vegas, demonstrated intuitive insights of magicians, magic tricks may help uncover new ways of investigating attention and awareness
Kuhn, Amlani, Rensink (2008) towards a science of magic: argued that cognitive science should not neglect effects created by magicians which are “ an important source of insight into the human mind”, called for general psychological theory of magic, a science of magic can direct new research into human perception and cognition. Can be done by studying processes stage magicians use to control attention (misdirection), distort perception (illusions) and influence choice (forcing)
Macknick et al (2008) Turning tricks into research: argued for a neuroscientific approach to understanding magic (neuromagic)
Otero-Millan et al. (2011), reciprocal relationship between magicians and scientists: observers watched videos of Apollo Robbins performing French Drop coin vanish trick, coin is apparently taken by right hand but is actually retained in the left. Eye tracker used to record eye fixation locations. Two conditions (right hand traveling in a straight path or curved path). Observers’ fixation jumped back to the left hand in straight motion but remained on the right hand more in curved motion. Straight path caused fast saccadic eye movements and the curved path produced slowed smooth pursuit eye movements. Magicians can manipulate not only the audience’s gaze position during a sleigh but also subsequent gaze location once the sleight is complete. Hand is not quicker than the eye. Illustrates magician’s intuitive understanding of visual perception and how it can be informed by science.
What is neuromagic?
Scientific study of the experience and performance of stage magic
Looks to explain the underlying psychological principles of perception, attention and cognition
To gain a greater understanding of the neural correlates of those principles
To apply those principles to the development of new stage illusions
What can neuroscientists learn about neuroscience of magical phenomena performed by stage magicians
a science of magic can direct new research into human perception and cognition. Can be done by studying processes stage magicians use to control attention (misdirection), distort perception (illusions) and influence choice (forcing)
Looks to explain the underlying psychological principles of perception, attention and cognition, To gain a greater understanding of the neural correlates of those principles
what are the different kinds of misdirection
Misdirection: drawing audience’s attention away from the “method” (secret behind effect) and toward the effect (what spectator perceives)
Overt: gaze directed away from process
Covert: attention directed away from process
Physical Misdirection: directs attention via properties of a stimulus (bottom-up/exogenous control), such as movement, contrast and novelty and magician’s eye gaze or body posture
Psychological Misdirection: directs attention via beliefs and expectations (top-down/endogenous control), such as secret props, suspense and false solutions
What are the different kinds of illusions
Optical Illusion: false perception created by manipulation of the physical properties of light via intricate combinations or mirrors and perspective (eg. peppers ghost)
Visual Illusion: subjective visual percept of a stimulus that does not match objective reality (eg. spoon bending)
Cognitive Illusions: false perception created by manipulating high-level processes like attention, memory and causal inference (drawing conclusions about cause and effect)
What are the different kinds of cognitive illusions
Change blindness: when a visual stimulus undergoes a change, observers often fail to notice the change
Inattentional Blindness: when observers are focused on an object or event they often fail to notice other salient or distinctive stimuli
Choice Blindness: when observers choose an item, but are later presented with a different item that is supposedly their chosen item they often fail to notice the discrepancy
Illusory Correlation: believing that there is a relationship between two events, when none actually exists
What are the different kinds of forcing
Forcing: an apparently free will choice is controlled by the magician
Physical Force: selection of a physical object is controlled by physical manipulation (eg. pull card from deck that is all Ace of spades)
Mental Force: choice of a piece of information is controlled by its presentation (eg. choosing one card from deck which is manipulated ot be displayed longer than any other card)
What is an ongoing issue in understanding of misdirection
ISSUE: What cues affect misdirection? Are social cues relevant?
Kuhn / Land (2006): observers watched vanishing ball illusion. Conditions: pro-social cues (magician moved head and eyes up to follow an imaginary ball), anti-social cues (magician looked at hand concealing ball). Gaze recorded using eye tracker. RESULTS: pro-social cues: 63% perceived the ball leave his hand, move upwards and disappear. Antisocial cues: only 32% perceived illusion. Eye tracker shower observes glanced at magician’s face before looking at the ball. CONCLUSION: magicians can use joint attention cues (their own gaze) to strengthen the perception of magic. Join attention = multiple people paying attention to an object, via verbal cues, eye-gaze, gestures or other non-verbal cues
Rieiro, Martinez-Conde, Macknik (2013): observers watched videos of Teller performing cups and balls magic trick in which balls appear and disappear inside three upside down cups. Observers pressed one button when a ball was placed and another when a ball was removed. Gaze recorded using an eye tracker. Conditions: standard trick, ball dropped on floor, ball placed on table, ball stuck to cup. Half of trials used opaque cups and other half used transparent cups. Half of trials showed magician’s face and other half occluded his face. RESULTS: detection performance worse in table and stuck conditions (contrary to magician’s intuition). Detection of loading third cup was at chance level with opaque cups but above chance with transparent cups. Performance improved with increasing number of trials. Performance equivalent in face visible and occluded conditions. CONCLUSIONS: suggest way magicians can enhance this trick. Magician’s gaze (social misdirection) had no effect.
Explain some criticisms in neuromagic
Practical problems (not every trick works every time, requires trained performer with specialized abilities)
in 10 years, no new cognitive phenomena have been discovered by studying magic
a science of magic is misguided.
Distractions used experimentally are different from misdirection in magic.
Too much variability among magic tricks and they overlap in many ways
Too little structure for a given trick which can be performed many different ways
Due to the variability in methods and effect it is impossible to create a taxonomy of magic
What are some future directions for field of neuromagic
Resolve the debate about the role of social cues in misdirection and determine the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved
Focus not on surface differences that exist in the method and effects of magic tricks but on the underlying psychological principles in order to gain a deeper understanding
Further establish the ecological validity of neuromagic research: to what extent does it accurately reflect real-world, everyday experiences?
