The Other Side of Magic.
Summary (1 min read)
Introduction
- Note that these experiences are quite compelling even though you know very well that there is no complete triangle (in panel c) or cross (in panel d) behind your thumb.
- It is also interesting to consider that with tricks based on attentional misdirection, every sense of magic is lost once you know how the trick works.
Cognitive impenetrability
- The only reason why the upper figures look white while the lower figures look black is that they are viewed in different contexts (Anderson & Winawer, 2005; see also Adelson, 2000 and Gilchrist et al., 1999 for similar demonstrations).
- Some effects of learning and knowledge on their mental processing of occluded objects have been documented, (Vrins et al., 2009, Hazenberg et al., 2014, Hazenberg & van Lier, 2015), but it can be discussed whether these effects are part of what should be called amodal perception proper.
- When people try to debunk a trick based on amodal perception, the cognitively impenetrable illusion (or visual fixedness) closes the door to the right solution even before any conscious problem-solving even starts.
- Visual fixedness and the cognitive impenetrability of perceptual mechanisms may be regarded as an extreme form of this kind of generation of false assumptions that may be critical to the robustness and potency of many magic tricks.
- Based on this reasoning, investigating the effect of repeated presentations of magic tricks on the spectators’ likelihood of figuring out the method could be a promising tool for elucidating the nature of the mechanisms underlying different kinds of magic tricks.
Summary and conclusions
- The authors have argued that automatic perceptual and cognitive mechanisms governing how they experience and reason about hidden things – in particular those underlying the well-known phenomenon of amodal presence and the less well-known, but presumably intimately related phenomenon of amodal absence –play a central role in many magic tricks.
- The authors have also argued the causal role of these mechanisms, which cannot be observed directly, is difficult to appreciate even for experienced magicians, and that it may therefore have been largely neglected in discussions of how magic works.
- The authors have also suggested that the surprising discrepancy between the expected and the actual efficiency of many magical routines may serve as a tell-tale sign of interesting psychological effects that may help guide further research into the psychology of magic.
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Citations
471 citations
38 citations
17 citations
Cites background from "The Other Side of Magic."
...A person’s gaze direction, for example, can hold valuable information regarding that person’s spatial locus of attention (Langton et al., 2000), a fact that is often exploited by magicians (e.g., Tatler et al. (2007) and Ekroll et al. (2017))....
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16 citations
References
75 citations
"The Other Side of Magic." refers background in this paper
...Thus, to borrow an example from van Lier (1999), “seeing” the backside of a tree trunk can also be considered as an instance of amodal completion....
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...Rather, in so-called amodal volume completion (Tse, 1999; van Lier, 1999; van Lier & Wagemans, 1999), the visible surface of a full-fledged three-dimensional object can complete amodally into the entire boundary surface of a volumetric surface....
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74 citations
"The Other Side of Magic." refers background in this paper
...As discussed by Kuhn et al. (2014), an important feature of successful misdirection is that it should be counterintuitive....
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...In terms of the taxonomy of misdirection recently proposed by Kuhn et al. (2014), magic based on amodal perception and other cognitively impenetrable perceptual effects fit nicely into the category of nonattentional perceptual misdirection....
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...…neglected factor in magic, which we believe is of great practical and theoretical importance but tends to escape the attention of magicians because it is, to a much greater extent than many other forms of misdirection (see Kuhn et al., 2014, for an overview), independent of the magician’s skill....
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...Magicians also often highlight the importance of setting up misleading assumptions and expectations in order to conceal the method behind a trick (Kuhn et al., 2014; Ortiz, 2006)....
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53 citations
"The Other Side of Magic." refers background in this paper
...Panels (a) and (b) of Figure 2 illustrate the well-known Gestalt principle of good continuation (Wertheimer, 1923/2012)....
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47 citations
43 citations
"The Other Side of Magic." refers background in this paper
...…causality (Duncker, 1945, pp. 66–67; Leslie, 1988; Michotte, 1954/1963; Ortiz, 2006, p. 54; Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000), actions and intentions (Scholl & Gao, 2013; Van de Cruys, Wagemans, & Ekroll, 2015), or even “realness” (Leddington, 2016; Mausfeld, 2013; Michotte, 1991; Vishwanath, 2013, 2014)....
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...Ortiz (2006, p. 37; see also Leddington, 2016) has argued that magic “can only be established by a process of elimination.”...
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...” Yet, the audience not only perceives that the knife penetrates the arm, they also experience it as utterly real (Leddington, 2016; Mausfeld, 2013; Michotte, 1991) and correspondingly repulsive....
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...Yet, the audience not only perceives that the knife penetrates the arm, they also experience it as utterly real (Leddington, 2016; Mausfeld, 2013; Michotte, 1991) and correspondingly repulsive....
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...54; Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000), actions and intentions (Scholl & Gao, 2013; Van de Cruys, Wagemans, & Ekroll, 2015), or even “realness” (Leddington, 2016; Mausfeld, 2013; Michotte, 1991; Vishwanath, 2013, 2014)....
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