SoMA Newsletter - June/July 2021

Hello!

Hope everyone's been doing as well as possible.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our third Conversations on Science, Magic, & Society webinar on Advancing Magic Through Science! You can now watch a recording that event, and all the past webinars, on our site. Our next webinar, on the topic of 'Deception Offstage' is happening this coming Sunday (more details below).

We're looking forward to 'seeing' some of you at our upcoming events. And we're still hoping it will be possible to hold an in-person conference in London in summer 2022; we'll post updates here as that situation develops.

In the meantime, here're some SoM related news items.

Stay safe & sane,

Matt Tompkins
On Behalf of the SoMA Committee

Next Webinar: Deception Offstage
(This Sunday!)

Our next webinar, will be taking place this Sunday, July 25 at 2pm EST

You can use the following link watch the event live on Zoom:
https://bit.ly/SoMA-Conversations

And you can view details on the featured speakers HERE
(We will also be posting a recording of the event to this page, so no worries if you can't make it to the live version)

Past Webinar Recording: Advancing Magic Through Science

Our third webinar, on Advancing Science Through Magic, took place on June 27.
You can catch-up on the recording and browse some selected references HERE

New Research Highlight:
Magic, Learning, & Creativity

A new paper in PeerJ from Richard Wiseman, Amy Wiles, and Caroline Watt reports that children who are taught to perform simple magic tricks score subsequently higher on measures of creativity than children who engaged in an art-based control condition involving a drawing lesson. The authors propose that magic based interventions could be a cost-effective intervention for boosting creativity in school children.

You can read the full paper HERE

New Research Highlight:
Using Magic Tricks to Explore Individual Differences in Curiosity in Infants

A new longitudinal study in PNAS by Jasmin Perez & Lisa Feigenson involved using magic tricks to examine infant responses to expectation violations. They showed that infant responses were consistent across two unrelated expectations violations spaced 6 months appart, and that these responses predicted older children's explanation-based curiosity. The authors suggest that such responses may be linked with later cognitive abilities.

You can read the full paper HERE

The First Annual Inclusivity & Diversity in Magic Conference

Potentially of interest to anyone interested in SoM: This event is a three-day virtual conference on the topic of inclusivity and diversity in magic, with a special focus on women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, and individuals living with disabilities who were or are also magicians.

Click HERE for more info and tickets

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