ArticleJournal of eye movement research2019
Microsaccades reflect the dynamics of misdirected attention in magic.
Article in Journal of eye movement research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Magic and cognition: a scoping review of empirical evidence on cognitive and neural processes.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Assessing the role of magician patter on deception in the Three-Card Monte.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Multiplexing of cognitive encoding by oculomotor networks leads to incidental gaze shifts.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Microsaccades reflect attention shifts: a mini review of 20 years of microsaccade research.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- What the Neuroscience and Psychology of Magic Reveal about Misinformation.Publications (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Optic Flow Speed and Retinal Stimulation Influence Microsaccades.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Microsaccades in Applied Environments: Real-World Applications of Fixational Eye Movement Measurements.Journal of eye movement research · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The methods of magicians provide powerful tools for enhancing the ecological validity of laboratory studies of attention. The current research borrows a technique from magic to explore the relationship between microsaccades and covert attention under near-natural viewing conditions. We monitored participants' eye movements as they viewed a magic trick where a coin placed beneath a napkin vanishes and reappears beneath another napkin. Many participants fail to see the coin move from one location to the other the first time around, thanks to the magician's misdirection. However, previous research was unable to distinguish whether or not participants were fooled based on their eye movements. Here, we set out to determine if microsaccades may provide a window into the efficacy of the magician's misdirection. In a multi-trial setting, participants monitored the location of the coin (which changed positions in half of the trials), while engaging in a delayed match-to-sample task at a different spatial location. Microsaccades onset times varied with task difficulty, and microsaccade directions indexed the locus of covert attention. Our combined results indicate that microsaccades may be a useful metric of covert attentional processes in applied and ecologically valid settings.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.