Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

The Magic Grasp: Motor Expertise in Deception

Cavina-Pratesi, C.; Kuhn, G.; Ietswaart, M.; Milner, A.D.

The Magic Grasp: Motor Expertise in Deception Thumbnail


Authors

C. Cavina-Pratesi

G. Kuhn

M. Ietswaart

A.D. Milner



Abstract

Background Most of us are poor at faking actions. Kinematic studies have shown that when pretending to pick up imagined objects (pantomimed actions), we move and shape our hands quite differently from when grasping real ones. These differences between real and pantomimed actions have been linked to separate brain pathways specialized for different kinds of visuomotor guidance. Yet professional magicians regularly use pantomimed actions to deceive audiences. Methodology and Principal Findings In this study, we tested whether, despite their skill, magicians might still show kinematic differences between grasping actions made toward real versus imagined objects. We found that their pantomimed actions in fact closely resembled real grasps when the object was visible (but displaced) (Experiment 1), but failed to do so when the object was absent (Experiment 2). Conclusions and Significance We suggest that although the occipito-parietal visuomotor system in the dorsal stream is designed to guide goal-directed actions, prolonged practice may enable it to calibrate actions based on visual inputs displaced from the action.

Citation

Cavina-Pratesi, C., Kuhn, G., Ietswaart, M., & Milner, A. (2011). The Magic Grasp: Motor Expertise in Deception. PLoS ONE, 6(2), Article e16568. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016568

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Feb 1, 2011
Deposit Date Oct 12, 2011
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal PLoS ONE
Publisher Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 6
Issue 2
Article Number e16568
DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016568

Files

Published Journal Article (215 Kb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright: © 2011 Cavina-Pratesi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations