No need for a social cue! A masked magician can also trick the audience in the vanishing ball illusion

Abstract

In the vanishing ball illusion (VBI), a magician throws a ball up in the air twice, after which he pretends to toss it up again, when in fact it remains secretly concealed in his hand. Observers perceive an imaginary ball disappearing into the air. According to Kuhn and Land (2006), the VBI during the fake throw is mediated by the magician's gaze and/or head direction (also called Bsocial cues^) as he looks toward the imaginary ball. The aim of this article is to test an alternative interpretation. According to our hypothesis, the magician's social cues are not essential to the VBI. We compared the numbers of participants experiencing the VBI when the magician's social cues were directed toward the illusory ball and when the magician's social cues were either hidden behind a black mask (Exp. 1) or stationary (Exp. 2). The results showed that the number of observers experiencing the VBI was high (almost two-thirds of the participants), regardless of whether the magician's social cueing was directed toward the illusion, hidden behind a mask, or stationary. In a third experiment (Exp. 3), we replicated Kuhn and Land's initial results and attempted to further explain their Banti-illusion^social-cue effect. This study confirms that social cueing is not required in the VBI: Its presence did not increase the number of participants experiencing the illusion.

The Flushtration Count Illusion: Attribute substitution tricks our interpretation of a simple visual event sequence

“…According to Thomas and Didierjean (,b; Barnhart, ; see also Beth & Ekroll, ; Ekroll et al ., ; Ekroll & Wagemans, ; Kuhn & Rensink, ) during a magic trick, participants’ susceptibility to the illusion often relies on their capacity to reduce the dissonance between what they saw and what they expected to see. To reduce this dissonance, some participants could prioritize their beliefs and ignore some perceptual feedback (see Thomas & Didierjean, ).…”

The Phantom Vanish Magic Trick: Investigating the Disappearance of a Non-existent Object in a Dynamic Scene

“…These ratings served to corroborate the written reports: participants who reported phantom objects rated the Phantom Vanish Trick video to be more surprising, impossible, and magical than those who did not experience the illusion. Past research, on false transfer tricks (e.g., Cui et al, 2011 ; Beth and Ekroll, 2015 ) and on the Vanishing Ball Illusion (e.g., Triplett, 1900 ; Kuhn and Land, 2006 ; Thomas and Didierjean, 2016a ), has involved misleading participants about the motion and location of an object: the object was shown, and then was apparently passed from one hand to the other while secretly being retained in the first hand; or, the object was shown and then apparently tossed into the air while being secretly retained in the hand (or secretly dropped into the magician’s lap). In contrast, the PVI paradigm entirely eliminates the need to present an object during the critical trial.…”

“…For example, one could manipulate which objects are shown in the preceding videos, or manipulate the number of videos that precede the Phantom Vanish Trick. Additionally, the social cues of the magician could be manipulated by occluding the magician’s face, or by including a condition where the magician maintains a fixed, unmoving gaze (see Thomas and Didierjean, 2016a ).…”

“…They also argued that eye-tracking recordings suggested that social cues from the magician contributed to the illusion, that is, spectators who experienced the Vanishing Ball Illusion (the misperception of an illusory ball) looked to the magician’s eyes and were misdirected by his gaze as he looked upwards during the false throw. Subsequent studies have demonstrated that this magical effect remains relatively robust even without deceptive social cues ( Thomas and Didierjean, 2016a ; for a broader discussion of the role of social cues in magic see Cui et al, 2011 ; Tachibana and Kawabata, 2014 ; Kuhn et al, 2016 ). More recent research has demonstrated that the illusion can also be induced even in the absence of the initial “real” throws ( Kuhn and Rensink, 2016 ).…”

Scientific Study of Magic: Binet’s Pioneering Approach Based on Observations and Chronophotography

“…For example, magicians can manipulate spectators' expectations and perceptual anticipations in order to make them "see" what does not exist and overlook the method behind the trick. A well-studied illusion based on perceptual anticipation is the vanishing ball illusion (VBI) (Kuhn & Land, 2006;Kuhn & Rensink, 2016;Thomas & Didierjean, 2016;Triplett, 1900). In VBI, the magician throws a ball up in the air several times.…”