Articlei-Perception
A Perceptual Illusion of Empty Space Can Create a Perceptual Illusion of Levitation.
Article in i-Perception. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Electroencephalographic Responses to the Number of Objects in Partially Occluded and Uncovered Scenes.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- Visual Cognition and the Science of Magic.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Underestimation of the number of hidden objects.Journal of vision · 2023Article
- The illusion of absence: how a common feature of magic shows can explain a class of road accidents.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2021Article
- On the cognitive bases of illusionism.PeerJ · 2020Article
- Article
- Illusions of Imagery and Magical Experiences.i-PerceptionArticle
- Article
- The Illusion of Absence in Magic Tricks.i-PerceptionArticle
- Amodal Completion Revisited.i-PerceptionArticle
- Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A recent analysis of magic tricks suggests the existence of a perceptual illusion where the space hidden behind an occluding object is experienced as empty in a strangely compelling way. Here, we show that this illusion of absence is not just a trivial consequence of the lack of retinal stimulation but rather the result of an active process of perceptual construction. The results of a simple experiment show that this perceptual illusion of absence can in turn trigger perceptual processes which generate an immediate perceptual impression of levitation via a percept-percept coupling. This suggests that magical illusions of levitation are partially driven by an immediate perceptual impression of floating in thin air. The perceptual mechanisms underlying the illusion of absence are hitherto unknown, but our results provide support for a potential explanation based on the generic view principle.
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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.