Deceptive Biological Motion
Monday, January 5, 2009
Natter, M., & Phillips, F. (2008). The french drop sleight: Deceptive biological motion [Abstract]. Journal of Vision, 8(6):1052, 1052a, http://journalofvision.org/8/6/1052/, doi:10.1167/8.6.1052.
Mike’s thesis was on the French Drop Sleight. Back in 1993 or so, during a visit to Columbus, Teller and I were having a brunch and he showed me this classic trick. We pondered some of the mechanical, social, and visual cues/deceptions involved in its successful execution and I mentioned that I’d get around to doing the experiments some day.
15 years later...
Mike was a student in my perception class a few years ago where he was able to con a good percentage of the class at three-card Monte, so he seemed like a natural fit to do the experiments. We did a variety of measures - attention, spatial, and electromyographic, and found some interesting things - most notably that the idea of ‘stress transfer’ (mimicking the muscular events that would happen if you actually transferred the coin) are important in the illusion’s success.
A paper is pending... we’re working on it. Until then here’s a link to the poster:
