Blinded by magic: eye-movements reveal the misdirection of attention.

Anthony S Barnhart,Stephen D Goldinger

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01461

Anthony S Barnhart, Stephen D Goldinger

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01461

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Abstract

Recent studies (e.g., Kuhn and Tatler, 2005) have suggested that magic tricks can provide a powerful and compelling domain for the study of attention and perception. In particular, many stage illusions involve attentional misdirection, guiding the observer's gaze to a salient object or event, while another critical action, such as sleight of hand, is taking place. Even if the critical action takes place in full view, people typically fail to see it due to inattentional blindness (IB). In an eye-tracking experiment, participants watched videos of a new magic trick, wherein a coin placed beneath a napkin disappears, reappearing under a different napkin. Appropriately deployed attention would allow participants to detect the “secret” event that underlies the illusion (a moving coin), as it happens in full view and is visible for approximately 550 ms. Nevertheless, we observed high rates of IB. Unlike prior research, eye-movements during the critical event showed different patterns for participants, depending upon whether they saw the moving coin. The results also showed that when participants watched several “practice” videos without any moving coin, they became far more likely to detect the coin in the critical trial. Taken together, the findings are consistent with perceptual load theory (Lavie and Tsal, 1994).

Highlights

Magicians and scientists have always engaged in a discourse, typically leading to magicians applying the newest technological innovations for use in deceiving the masses
We examined the proportion of fixations falling upon five different regions of interest (ROIs) during the entire 550ms critical period when the coin was visibly moving across the screen in the inattentional blindness (IB) trial: the napkin covering the coin’s starting position, the napkin covering the coin’s end point, the space between the napkins, the cup which was being displayed to the camera, and the magician’s face
Our results replicate and extend the work of Kuhn and colleagues (Kuhn and Tatler, 2005; Kuhn et al, 2008b; Kuhn and Findlay, 2010) using a technique that improves upon prior magical methods that have been implemented in the laboratory

Summary

Introduction

Magicians and scientists have always engaged in a discourse, typically leading to magicians applying the newest technological innovations for use in deceiving the masses. This was the case with Robert-Houdin’s (1859) early use of electromagnetism to change the weight of a small box at the magician’s will. The dynamic has shifted such that scientists are becoming interested in the techniques employed by magicians (Kuhn et al, 2008a; Macknik et al, 2008; Macknik and Martinez-Conde, 2010). There is an increasing awareness that magicians are informal cognitive scientists who continually test hypotheses outside of the sterile confines of the laboratory. Magic provides an ecologically valid arena for studying IB both in well-controlled laboratory conditions (Kuhn et al, 2008b) and in conditions with more natural performance and viewing (Kuhn and Tatler, 2005)

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