Abstract
Cognitive scientists have paid very little attention to magic as a distinctly human activity capable of creating situations that are considered impossible because they violate expectations and conclude with the apparent transgression of well-established cognitive and natural laws. This illusory experience of the “impossible” entails a very particular cognitive dissonance that is followed by a subjective and complex “magical experience”. Here, from a perspective inspired by visual neuroscience and ecological cognition, we propose a set of seven fundamental cognitive phenomena (from attention and perception to memory and decision-making) plus a previous pre-sensory stage that magicians interfere with during the presentation of their effects. By doing so, and using as an example the deconstruction of a classic trick, we show how magic offers novel and powerful insights to study human cognition. Furthermore, live magic performances afford to do so in tasks that are more ecological and context-dependent than those usually exploited in artificial laboratory settings. We thus believe that some of the mysteries of how the brain works may be trapped in the split realities present in every magic effect.
Highlights
Illusionism is a millenary art whose social context has evolved substantially over time
Our goal is to offer an unexplored perspective on the cognitive mechanisms that explain the efficacy of magic tricks and how this knowledge can, in return, feedback into cognitive neuroscience research
To be considered as such, magic tricks should induce in the audience a sort of cognitive dissonance, the so-called "illusion of impossibility", resulting from the blatant conflict between the expectations created during the presentation of the effect and its outcome
Summary
Illusionism is a millenary art whose social context has evolved substantially over time. To be considered as such, magic tricks should induce in the audience a sort of cognitive dissonance, the so-called "illusion of impossibility", resulting from the blatant conflict between the expectations created during the presentation of the effect and its outcome. This tension comes with an initial surprise that is followed by other reactions, which can range from admiration to unease, through enchantment. Magicians have developed very controlled, perfectly repeatable routines that work for practically one hundred percent of their audience, without exception Their effects interfere, either in isolation or concurrently, with almost all the cognitive processes studied in the laboratory, from attention and memory to perception and decision making (Figure 1). Most magic techniques and procedures in use today can be assigned to at least one of the eight sections we present below (Figure 1)
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