Submission 433
Learning About Perception by Studying the Art of Magic
SymposiumTalk-04
Presented by: Vebjørn Ekroll
Many magic tricks work much better than one would expect based on knowledge of the secret method and known psychological mechanisms, which suggests that there are unknown psychological factors at play. Thus, a promising heuristic for advancing cognitive science by studying the art of magic is to look for tricks which work much better than expected. As an illustration of the application of this research heuristic, I summarize recent research on the illusion of absence. This phenomenon can be described as the compelling visual impression that the space behind an occluder is empty, even when it is not. The phenomenon is similar to amodal completion in the sense that it refers to occluded scene regions and is cognitively impenetrable, but different from amodal completion in the sense that it cannot be explained in terms of the Gestalt principle of good continuation. This phenomenon contributes to explaining how magicians can create powerful illusions where things seem to appear out of nowhere, vanish into thin air, or levitate with surprisingly simple methods. Interestingly, the same illusion may also contribute to our understanding of road accidents where drivers report that other road users seemed to appear out of nowhere. The currently available evidence suggest that the illusion is more likely to occur (1) with narrow occluders and (2) when the motion paths of the occluder and the occluded objects are accidentally aligned. Overall, the findings are in line with Irvin Rock’s coincidence avoidance principle.
Supported by the Research Council of Norway, project 334817.