Intuitions about magic track the development of intuitive physics

• Published in: Cognition 2021-09, Vol.214, p.104762-104762, Article 104762
• Main Authors: Lewry, Casey, Curtis, Kaley, Vasilyeva, Nadya, Xu, Fei, Griffiths, Thomas L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adults; Age; Experiments; Infants; Intuitive physics; Magic; Mimicry; Ontological commitments; Physics; Violation-of-expectation; Violations
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104762

Many successful magic tricks violate our assumptions about how physical objects behave, but some magic tricks are better than others. We examined whether the interest adults express in a magic trick is predicted by the age at which infants first respond to violation of the corresponding physical principle. In Experiment 1, adults (N = 319) rated their interest in magic tricks mimicking stimuli from violation-of-expectation experiments with infants. We found a clear correlation between how interesting a trick is and the age at which infants demonstrate a sensitivity to its underlying principle. In a second experiment (N = 350), we replicated this finding and also used three additional tricks for which there is no established age of acquisition to predict the age at which those physical principles might be acquired. A third experiment (N = 368) replicated these findings measuring adults' surprise at physical violations rather than their interest in magic tricks. Our results suggest that adults' intuitions reflect the development of physical knowledge and show how magic can reveal our expectations about the physical world.