Autism and Magic

I was really intrigued by the first video I watched. I’ve always been curious about magic and how exactly magicians are able to pull off the tricks they do. I’m definitely one of those people that try extremely hard to figure out how the tricks are done, but usually to no avail. It seems like no matter how hard I pay attention, I still can’t figure them out. So it was interesting to me to learn that our brains can be tricked by something seemingly as simple as curving your hand upwards and that even a person’s face can be distracting enough for a trick to be pulled on you. While I was watching the video, I literally had to fight every instinct in me to watch the magician’s other hand in order to see through the trick. The second video made perfect sense. After watching the first one and seeing how they deceive us, I used what little knowledge I had about autism to sort of guess why they are able to see through the illusions. I found the article interesting as well. It seemed to follow along with the second video in the way that it talks about impaired prediction leading to anxiety. If you are unable follow social cues like the video mentions, then it could be hard to predict when something is about to happen which can create anxiety. For example, when you’re talking to someone and they look behind you at another person walking up, you can turn and see that they are coming but if the person you are speaking to does nothing, the person walking up could give you a scare. This obviously doesn’t cover all of the issues people with autism deal with, but it could definitely be a small portion of it. In my opinion though, I think it would be difficult to use magic to help people with autism. Just like I was going against my nature to look at the magicians other hand, I think you would have to ask people with autism to go against themselves in a way to pay close attention to the cues of the magician. So while I do think it would be hard, I wouldn’t say that it is necessarily impossible and if it could help people with autism, it’s definitely worth a try.