On the cognitive bases of illusionism

Camı́, Jordi; Gomez‐Marin, Alex; Martı́nez, Luis M.

doi:10.7717/peerj.9712

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 114 publications

(139 reference statements)

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“…Nelms [8] subdivides misdirection into that of the mind, attention, and eye, whilst Corinda [34] distinguishes between misdirection achieved by speech and achieved by action. A number of more thorough taxonomies and categorisations of misdirection techniques have been developed [35,36,4,37]: the reader is directed to Kuhn et al [38] for a thorough analysis and comparison. At the highest level, this work separates perceptual, memory, and reasoning misdirection.…”

Section: Existing Taxonomiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Camí et al [37] note the influence of unconscious amodal completion in deception: that is, perceiving an entire object despite its partial concealment. As well as forming the basis of many optical illusions, this effect can be exploited by magicians: if we see a pen being held horizontally by its centre, we visualise the concealed middle of the pen, based on our prior experience and knowledge of biros.…”

Section: Amodal Completionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How to Fool Your Robot: Designing Exploitable Sensory Systems

Hardman,

Iida

2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng.

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Based on real-world interactions in our lives and in the lives of our ancestors, humans have developed a multitude of psychological, social, and reflexive actions for efficient living. We consider the integration of similar behaviours into embodied robots through the design of their sensory systems, evaluating their impact through a novel lens: how magicians exploit these human behaviours in order to fool their spectators into experiencing impossible events. We explore the consequences of designing agents which can experience magic effects, and argue that such design facilities lifelike actions.

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Section: Existing Taxonomiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Amodal Completionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Fool Your Robot: Designing Exploitable Sensory Systems

Hardman,

Iida

2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng.

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Long-term memory of real-world episodes is independent of recency effects: magic tricks as ecological tasks

Bestue

Martı́nez

Gomez‐Marin

et al. 2020

Heliyon

Self Cite

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How episodic memories decay is an unresolved question in cognitive neuroscience. The role of short-term mechanisms regarding the decay of episodic memories is circumscribed to set the maximum recall from which a monotonic decay occurs. However, this sequential view from the short to the long-term is not compulsory, as short-term dependent memory gains (like recency effects when memorizing a list of elements; serial-position effects) may not be translated into long-term memory differences. Moreover, producing memorable events in the laboratory faces important challenges, such as recreating realistic conditions with elevated recall, or avoiding spontaneous retrievals during memory retention (sociocultural hooks). The current study proposes the use of magic to enhance the study of memory. We designed a sequence of magic tricks performed live on stage to evaluate the interaction between memory decay and serial-position effects of those tricks. The audience was asked to freely recall the tricks at four different timepoints: just after the show, 10 days, 1.5 months and 4.5 months. We discovered serial-position differences after the show that were no longer present later on, suggesting that short-term memory gains do not translate into the long-term. Illustrating the power of naturalistic stimuli to study long-term memory while interrogating the interaction between short-term and long-term mechanisms, this work is, to our knowledge, the first scientific study of the memorability of magic tricks.

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Magic, Bayes and wows: A Bayesian account of magic tricks

Grassi

Bartels

2021

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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Magic tricks have enjoyed an increasing interest by scientists. However, most research in magic focused on isolated aspects of it and a conceptual understanding of magic, encompassing its distinct components and varieties, is missing. Here, we present an account of magic within the theory of Bayesian predictive coding. We present the "wow" effect of magic as an increase in surprise evoked by the prediction error between expected and observed sensory data. We take into account prior knowledge of the observer, attention, and (mis-)direction of perception and beliefs by the magician to bias the observer's predictions and present two examples for the modelling of the evoked surprise. The role of misdirection is described as everything that aims to maximize the surprise a trick evokes by the generation of novel beliefs, the exploitation of background knowledge and attentional control of the incoming information. Understanding magic within Bayesian predictive coding allows unifying all aspects of magic tricks within one framework, making it tractable, comparable and unifiable with other models in psychology and neuroscience.

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On the cognitive bases of illusionism

Cited by 3 publications

References 114 publications

How to Fool Your Robot: Designing Exploitable Sensory Systems

How to Fool Your Robot: Designing Exploitable Sensory Systems

Long-term memory of real-world episodes is independent of recency effects: magic tricks as ecological tasks

Magic, Bayes and wows: A Bayesian account of magic tricks

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