Svalebjørg Mats, Øhrn Heidi, Ekroll Vebjørn
Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen.
Iperception. 2020 Jun 25;11(3):2041669520928383. doi: 10.1177/2041669520928383. eCollection 2020 May-Jun.
Recently, a curious illusion of absence has been described, where the space behind an occluder is compellingly experienced as empty. This illusion is similar to illusions based on amodal completion in the sense that it refers to occluded portions of a visual scene and informal observations suggest that it may also be largely impervious to conscious knowledge. The aim of the present experiment was to test the hypothesis that the illusion of absence is cognitively impenetrable in the same way as amodal completion. Participants viewed magic tricks based on amodal completion, the illusion of absence, or attentional and reasoning misdirection and tried to infer the secret behind the tricks after one, two, or three presentations. The results show that the tricks based on the illusion of absence are very difficult to debunk, even after repeated presentations. In this regard, they are similar to tricks based on amodal completion but different from tricks based on attentional and reasoning misdirection. The participants also rated how magical they felt the tricks were. Surprisingly, the magic ratings tended to be quite high even in trials where the participants had already discovered the secret behind the trick. This unexpected finding may be taken to suggest that there may be two magical moments in the lifetime of a magic trick: In addition to the magical experience evoked by trick itself, discovering the secret behind the trick may also evoke an experience of impossibility.
最近，一种奇特的缺失错觉被描述出来，即遮挡物后面的空间会令人强烈地感觉为空。这种错觉与基于非模态完型的错觉类似，因为它涉及视觉场景中被遮挡的部分，而且非正式观察表明，它在很大程度上也可能不受意识知识的影响。本实验的目的是检验这样一个假设，即缺失错觉与非模态完型一样，在认知上是不可穿透的。参与者观看了基于非模态完型、缺失错觉、注意力和推理误导的魔术，并在观看一、二或三次后试图推断魔术背后的秘密。结果表明，基于缺失错觉的魔术即使在多次展示后也很难被识破。在这方面，它们与基于非模态完型的魔术相似，但与基于注意力和推理误导的魔术不同。参与者还对他们觉得这些魔术有多神奇进行了评分。令人惊讶的是，即使在参与者已经发现魔术背后的秘密的试验中，魔术评分往往也相当高。这一意外发现可能表明，一个魔术的生命周期中可能有两个神奇时刻：除了魔术本身所唤起的神奇体验之外，发现魔术背后的秘密也可能唤起一种不可能的体验。
