Building up from the deconstruction of a classic magic trick, we provide here a cognitive foundation for the use of magic as a unique and largely untapped research tool to dissect cognitive processes in tasks arguably more natural than those usually exploited in artificial laboratory settings. And even though magic techniques appeal to all known cognitive processes from sensing, attention and perception to memory and decision making, the relation between science and magic has so far been mostly unidirectional, with the primary goal of unraveling how magic works.
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.Ĭognitive scientists have paid very little attention to magic as a distinctly human activity capable of creating situations or events that are considered impossible because they violate expectations and conclude with the apparent transgression of well-established cognitive and natural laws. 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. 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.
Cardiograph magic trick revealed plus#
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. This illusory experience of the “impossible” entails a very particular cognitive dissonance that is followed by a subjective and complex “magical experience”.
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.
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