{"id":2211,"date":"2015-11-24T14:26:45","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T19:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=2211"},"modified":"2015-11-24T14:30:31","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T19:30:31","slug":"abracadabra-the-connection-between-magic-tricks-and-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2015\/11\/24\/abracadabra-the-connection-between-magic-tricks-and-attention\/","title":{"rendered":"Abracadabra! &#8211; The Connection between Magic Tricks and Attention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\">Imagine that you go to a magic show.\u00a0 You spend the $10 entry fee at the entrance of the theater.\u00a0 You sit down among the throng of eager audience members waiting to see the dazzling, awe-inspiring tricks that will not just bend your mind\u2019s perception, but also the very laws of nature.\u00a0 Eventually, the magician takes the stage, and everybody including yourself suddenly becomes silent and still in anticipation.\u00a0 Then, he starts to perform tricks ranging from pulling rabbits out of hats to hoops that magically can become bound and unbound together at the flick\u00a0of the wrist.\u00a0 Before you know it, the show is almost over, but the magician has prepared for the audience a grand finale involving two mysterious doors.\u00a0 What happens next cannot be described with words as eloquently as this following clip:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Prestige - Hugh Jackman Performs Magic Trick\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/m3G2csvPoT0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Afterwards, the crowd including yourself becomes thunderous with applause over the impossible feat done before your eyes.\u00a0 Though if you had known that the illusion had been done with the use of trapdoors and a double, then you wouldn\u2019t be nearly as impressed, but rather you would feel cheated out of your money\u2019s worth.\u00a0 But every trick you had just seen had to have a logical reason behind it, because magic is done through science and not through paranormal means.\u00a0 Along these lines, one of the tools in a magician\u2019s arsenal involves the manipulation of the audience\u2019s attention called misdirection.\u00a0 Basically, misdirection is a technique utilized to direct the audience\u2019s attention to an object or event that leads the audience to a misunderstanding of the mechanics behind the trick.\u00a0 Misdirection can actually be explained in more psychologically terms, because of its connection to the three-network model of attention.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, before a more science-grounded definition can be given for misdirection.\u00a0 The model is comprised of three, mostly independent networks labeled initially as selection, capacity, and\u00a0alertness by Michael Posner in 1971, but as time has gone on its been modified into the trinity of alerting, orienting, and executive attention networks.\u00a0 Alerting is the ability to maintain a high-level of mental readiness or in other words stay alert, while orienting is the capability to select which incoming information to be focused on whether\u00a0or not one voluntary selects that<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/cognitivedaily\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/262\/files\/2012\/04\/i-baa00243255a2b7099346b33ae07045d-stroophyp.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"319\" height=\"206\" \/> information.\u00a0 Lastly, executive attention is the process by which conflicts between two or more attentional cues resolve.\u00a0 For example in the Stroop task as shown on the side, the participants had to state the physical color of words in a list.\u00a0 As you can see, the second list takes longer to respond to, because the two attentional cues of reading the word and seeing the color result in two different responses depending on which cue you respond to.\u00a0 The executive attention network deals with situation like these where conflict occurs.<\/p>\n<p>So how does misdirection connect to this model of attention?\u00a0 Misdirection takes advantage of the independence between the alerting and orienting networks as proposed in the research article entitled <em>The Applied Cognitive Psychology of Attention: A Step Closer to Understanding Magic Tricks<\/em>.\u00a0 The hypothesis for the experiment illustrated in the article was that even if the one\u2019s alerting network determines the timing of the critical event to a magic trick, they probably still wouldn\u2019t understand how the trick was performed due to the magician being able to redirect the orienting network to something irrelevant to the trick (this is the influence of misdirection).\u00a0 However the experimenters speculated that determining the timing led to a higher chance of figuring out the method to the trick.<\/p>\n<p>As written in the article, the experimenters designed an online survey to test this hypothesis where the participants watched a video of a magic trick involving the disappearance of a pen, and filled out questions related to the trick.\u00a0 The questions comprised mostly of three different types.\u00a0 At the beginning and end of the survey, the participants had to provide their own explanation to the trick accompanied with a confidence score from 1-5 of how confident they were about their explanation.\u00a0 The middle of the survey had a question where the participants guessed the timing of when the pen left the magician\u2019s hands (the critical event), and others where the participants check-marked the objects or concepts utilized in the trick.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/vTBjCrH4eBg\/maxresdefault.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"370\" height=\"208\" \/>The results reflected the experimenters\u2019 hypothesis in that only 11% of the participants who identified the correct timing of the critical event \u00a0could provide the correct explanation towards the trick, but the participants who could identify the right timing had a significantly increased \u00a0chance of stating the correct method behind the trick.\u00a0 This result suggests how independent the alerting and orienting networks of attention \u00a0are, because even the participants who had a high enough level of alertness to detect when the pen disappears from the magician\u2019s hands \u00a0cannot identify how due to the magician\u2019s use of misdirection to reorient attention to another irrelevant object or event.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the results showed the effect that confirmation bias could have had on the subjects\u2019 answers. \u00a0Confirmation bias is essentially when \u00a0someone takes information that reinforces a preconceived notion, while ignoring any competing information, which results in an accidentally \u00a0bias towards that preconceived notion.\u00a0 The experimenters demonstrated that those with a higher confidence score for their initial explanation were significantly less likely to revise their explanation at the end of the questionnaire.\u00a0 Therefore, this significant result indicates that the questions in the middle portion of the survey were used to reinforce their original explanation (their preconceived notion) rather than provide insight into alternate solutions that could explain the trick.\u00a0 This demonstrates that the audience could have an influence on the effectiveness of the magic trick.<\/p>\n<p>In conclusion, magic serves typically as a means for entertainment, but it illustrates how our attention can be used against us.\u00a0 As suggested by the researchers, this could lead to better ways to utilize deception in future research, which could also then lead to new insight into the workings of the mind.\u00a0 Also, studies done on the flaws in our attention could, in the long-run, result in new technologies that would avoid altogether these attentional pitfalls.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-wtUDA5akDtE\/URFEclZgBcI\/AAAAAAAAMEA\/ZFR-1hgcMcs\/s1600\/learn-card-magic-tricks.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For more scientific reading on the Stroop task, click <a href=\"http:\/\/psychclassics.yorku.ca\/Stroop\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the research article that this blog post is based on, click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jgh.ca\/uploads\/Psychiatry\/Articles%20PDF\/Magic1-Published.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>References:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Demacheva, I., Ladouceur, M., Steinberg, E., Pogossova, G., &amp; Raz, A. (2012). The applied cognitive psychology of attention: A step closer to understanding magic tricks. <em>Applied Cognitive Psychology<\/em>, 26(4), 541-549. doi:10.1002\/acp.2825<\/p>\n<p>Raz, A., &amp; Buhle, J. (2006). Typologies of attentional networks.\u00a0<em>Nature Reviews Neuroscience<\/em>,\u00a0<em>7<\/em>(5), 367-379. doi:10.1038\/nrn1903<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Images\/Clips are retrieved from:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=m3G2csvPoT0\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=m3G2csvPoT0<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/cognitivedaily\/2007\/07\/05\/the-stroop-effect-not-as-autom-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/cognitivedaily\/2007\/07\/05\/the-stroop-effect-not-as-autom-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vTBjCrH4eBg\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vTBjCrH4eBg<\/a>\u00a0(Although this is a link to a video, there is an image from this clip found through searching &#8220;disappearing pen trick&#8221; on Google images)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.magicshop.co.uk\/2013\/02\/how-learn-card-magic-tricks-sleights.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/blog.magicshop.co.uk\/2013\/02\/how-learn-card-magic-tricks-sleights.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine that you go to a magic show.\u00a0 You spend the $10 entry fee at the entrance of the theater.\u00a0 You sit down among the throng of eager audience members waiting to see the dazzling, awe-inspiring tricks that will not just bend your mind\u2019s perception, but also the very laws of nature.\u00a0 Eventually, the magician [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216],"tags":[258863],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2211"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2223,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions\/2223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}