http://www.news-medical.net/news/2008/07/22/40176.aspx
and the abstract for the study which the article is about can be found here:
http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(08)00177-0
Researchers at Durham University believe that magic holds the key to a better understanding of human cognition and perception. Data is taken from the three different types of magic: misdirection (controlling a viewer's attention), illusion (distorting a viewer's perception), and forcing (influencing a viewer's choice). Using these areas of magic, they developed various tricks that would show how the mind worked. These findings were then compared to other scientific research. In one experiment, subjects watched a video of a misdirection trick in which a magician makes a cigarette and lighter "disappear." The subjects' eye movements were recorded as they watched, revealing that although many saw the items being dropped into the magician's lap the likelihood of them actually perceiving it was quite low. These observations directly relate to research in vision studies which says that we are only consciously aware of a small portion of what we see. It was most interesting to me how the researchers hope to use their findings. By understanding how people think and act better, they hope to make improvements in human computer interfaces. Understanding what holds a person's attention has very practical uses especially in today's ultra-competitive market and using magic to help this understanding is a very clever solution to an everyday challenge.
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Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any article for my response to keep up with the semi Halloween theme of this post. What I did find was a study of how the brain reads written language. As said in this post, the eye views all but what is sent to our brain for comprehension and realization is limited. This article discusses the way the eye reads written language. Although it feels like our eyes move smoothly from left to right when reading, our eyes bounce around quite a bit and only process information during pauses called ‘fixations’ lasting under a second. Studying how the eye views and process written language could be a key to helping people who suffer from learning disabilities such as dyslexia.
Here’s the article:
http://www.learninginfo.org/eye-movements-reading.htm
When searching for connections between science and magic, an article in The Scientist (http://classic.the-scientist.com/news/display/57799/) writes about a book entitled "Sleights of Mind: What the neuroscience of magic reveals about our everyday perceptions" by neurobiologists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde. On Stepehen Macknik's website (http://macknik.neuralcorrelate.com/node/12), I found a research article called "Optical Images of Visible and Invisible Percepts in the Primary Visual Cortex of Primates." This study tests a rhesus monkey with a visual masking illusion to find whether "...activity in the early visual system more closely reflects the physical stimulus or the generated percept." They said, "Visual illusions can be a powerful way to address this question because they have the benefit of dissociating the stimulus from perception". This emphasis on illusion is related to the practice of magic in order to perform acts that defy our perceptions.
http://www.gocognitive.net/video/alym-amlani-psychology-and-magic
This video is a little dorky (and hard to watch because of it) but it holds a lot of interesting information regarding magicians' knowledge of cognition and psychology and how they use it to their advantage.
The magician/psychologist in the video talks about the role of attention in cognitive processing, and how prestidigitation is all about the diversion and distraction of that attention. He also discusses how expectations can influence our perceptions, and gives some great examples.
Although we have read about mind illusions and how the brain makes assumptions about things so we are able to decide on things quickly, it is interesting to look at some of the examples. The first ones I found are about faces. The first one is Lincoln, and how easy it is to recognize him when his face is shown the correct way, but when it is upside down our brains find it very difficult to recognize him.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/illusions/form.html
The second one is about the shape of the face, and again it is one of the short cuts our brain uses to help us to recognize things quickly.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/illusions/form3_flash.html
The last is a short clip about illusions and manipulations. They are fascinating examples and I would be interested to know if anyone can explain. Some of it we have read about, such as the people who see things as colors, or read using their fingertips (not braille). This clip is Keith Barry showing how our brains are actually trained for deception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GigYWy2UmOY
In "Seeing is Believing: Children's Explanations of Commonplace, Magical, and Extraordinary Transformations," (1994) Karl S. Rosengren and Anne K. Hickling explore how children view and explain magic, which relates only in that it's about perception in any case, and some people will always choose to believe those great magicians are truly...magical. Anyway, Rosengren and Hickling explain how before the 1940s, childrens' thoughts were believed to be too magically based, fantastical. However, it has since been discovered that children do rationalize, in their own way, the world around them. When they see these "magical" events, they tie them to something concrete they know though not necessarily in a "logical" way. Instead, things that cannot be explained (such as a transformation of an object in front of the) are categorized as "magical," their way of confronting the unknown and indeed an active category in childhood mental development.
Neat, huh?
Misdirection, illusion and forcing! These definitely look like one big company's advertising strategies which we are actually experiencing in everyday of our lives. Thinking about how our brain works and how we perceive and how we pick up and focus on one major point helps other people with knowledge to easily manipulate us. Considering many techniques that are used in Tv commercials to either grab our attention on something by clearly throwing on our faces and yelling about a product or subtly penetrating into our minds and we remember it all day or just want to buy it at that second. Even a small example of fedex' logo with an arrow in the middle can be given. The arrow visually drags us there subtly pushes us to go there pick their company or just to reflect the "speed" just like every one needs for their shipment. This way our minds are manipulated to do or buy something.
This article also deals with magic and psychology:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.1984.7.1.25
Magicians use social conventions of human interaction to twist a viewer’s perception into believing the magic trick. Studying magic gives us a more clear understanding of everyday social interactions by uncovering unnoticed rituals and relationships. Expectations, attention, perception and rationality are elements of everyday life that magicians use to deceive audience members. Magicians are not the only people who use social conventions to manipulate and deceive others; politicians, advertisers, sales people and defense attorneys are just a few examples of professions that use social conventions to deceive others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUeF-kdfxCY
This video takes the concept of illusion to another area of cognition, that of consciousness. Much of what David Icke speaks about is similar to some of the ideas in "In cognito," however, Icke explains how one's perception of reality is directly reality to consciousness: if we accept the reality we are given, our perception of reality is limited, and it is up to us to bend this perception through a greater consciousness.
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