The magic of magic: The effect of magic tricks on subsequent engagement with lecture material

Moss, Simon; Irons, Melanie; Boland, Martin

doi:10.1111/bjep.12133

Cited by 14 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(43 reference statements)

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“…Finally, Moss, Irons & Boland (2017) conducted an online study in which adult participants either (i) watched a video of a magic trick (a gory version of the classic sawing in half trick) and were not told the secret of the illusion, (ii) watched the magic video but were told the secret, (iii) watched a video of a circus act, or (iv) didn't see any video. Participants then completed the 'Need For Cognition Scale' (Cacioppo, Petty & Kao, 1985), watched a neuroscience tutorial video, rated their engagement with the tutorial, and answered questions about its content.…”

Section: Delivering Information and Educational Messagingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conjuring cognition: a review of educational magic-based interventions

Wiseman

Watt

2020

PeerJ

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For hundreds of years, magic tricks have been employed within a variety of pedagogic contexts, including promoting science and mathematics, delivering educational messaging, enhancing scepticism about the paranormal, and boosting creative thinking for product design. This review examines this diverse body of work, focusing on studies that have assessed the impact of such interventions. Although the studies tended to yield positive outcomes, much of the work suffered from methodological shortcomings, including measuring the impact of interventions over a relatively short period of time, focusing on self-report measures and failing to employ control groups. The paper makes several recommendations for future study in the area, including assessing the longer-term impact of magic-based interventions, comparing these interventions to other types of pedagogic techniques, focussing on knowledge retention and behavioural outcomes, and collaborating with magicians to develop more impactful interventions.

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Section: Delivering Information and Educational Messagingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conjuring cognition: a review of educational magic-based interventions

Wiseman

Watt

2020

PeerJ

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“…He adds that magic can make classrooms more fun and enjoyable. Even though the classroom becomes very enjoyable and interesting, the implementation of magic does not give negative effects to the comprehension of the student towards the material (Moss et al, 2016).…”

Section: Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Magic Trick Problem-Based Activities to Improve Students' Engagement in a Listening Class

Ikhsanudin

Sudarsono²,

Salam³

2019

JELTIM

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Students engagement is a critical topic in the discussion of teaching and learning process quality, including at a tertiary level. The goal of this classroom action research is improving English education department engagement in a listening class through magic tricks problem-based activities. This research was conducted at the College of Teacher-Training and Education of Universitas Tanjungpura (FKIP UNTAN), Pontianak – Indonesia, in October-November 2018. The research was conducted in two cycles and the data were collected through participant observation. In three stages of analysis (initial coding, focused coding, and explanation), this research successfully improved the students' engagement. The students’ engagement was improved substantially in the second cycle after the magic trick activities were combined with pair discussion, group discussion, and cross-group discussion. The magic trick problem-based activities was an important factor that could invite the students' intellectual engagement. Whereas, the discussion activities improved the students emotional and behavioral engagement. The creative variation in the discussion stage had improved the students' engagement considerably.

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“…whereas the second version (N=30), used trivia questions (ver2: 'trivia version'). While magic video clips trigger strong curiosity 41 , a potential weakness is that they may exert extra demands on visual/perceptual attention and processing for participants, which could be a confound. Trivia questions, on the other hand, have often been used in past experiments of curiosity 5,6,42,43 , and the visual input is relatively minimal.…”

Section: Neuroimaging Experiments 11mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By making reference to the estimated effect size of a separate pilot study (N = 34), the original sample size of the initial behavioural experiment (N = 17) was sufficient to detect the estimated effect at a statistical power of 95%. 41 Additional fifteen participants were added later into this initial experiment in order to achieve more reliable estimates in data modelling and also for better comparison with other experiments (upon reviewers' suggestion). To control for the potential risk of inflated type 1 error due to this subsequent addition of participants, we followed the Šidák approach 94,95 to adjust critical P-value for multiple interim analyses conducted (see Methods above).…”

Section: Statement On Statistics and Reproducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Shared striatal activity in decisions to satisfy curiosity and hunger at the risk of electric shocks

Lau

Ozono

Kuratomi

et al. 2018

Preprint

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1Curiosity is often portrayed as a desirable feature of human faculty. However, curiosity 2 may come at a cost that sometimes puts people in a harmful situation. Here, with a set of 3 behavioural and neuroimaging experiments using stimuli that strongly trigger curiosity (e.g., 4 magic tricks), we examined the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the irresistible 5 lure of curiosity. We consistently demonstrated that across different samples, people were indeed 6 willing to gamble, subjecting themselves to physical risks (i.e. electric shocks) in order to satisfy

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The magic of magic: The effect of magic tricks on subsequent engagement with lecture material

Abstract: Future research is warranted to ascertain whether information that is embedded within a magic trick, rather than presented after the trick, is more likely to be remembered or understood later. This research could clarify when performance can enhance or disrupt student engagement.

Cited by 14 publications

References 31 publications

Conjuring cognition: a review of educational magic-based interventions

Conjuring cognition: a review of educational magic-based interventions

Using Magic Trick Problem-Based Activities to Improve Students' Engagement in a Listening Class

Shared striatal activity in decisions to satisfy curiosity and hunger at the risk of electric shocks

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