Kids and misdirection etc.

[Azrael 5]

Isn't it bizarre how (where sleight of hand magic is concerned)kids aren't fooled? I have shown tricks to my young sister and she has seen the sneaky move or sussed out the "sticky" cards etc.
They haven't been conditioned psychologically for misdirection,it seems.:boggled:

[BPScooter]

Ha ha! That's great. Chalk up another point for the innocence of childhood. My experience is a little different, my kid is just about my only audience now and I'm getting sloppy because he's so easy to distract that I can do about anything. This causes me to rush a test-drive of a trick I probably need to practice more. On the other hand, if he does see right through me it means that the bulk of the bell curve is going to do the same, and it was one crappy performance. ;-) It is nice to have a person who is truly amaze-able around though, I think I would have never had the guts to whip out the classic "pass" without him. Somehow I never trusted that the move was in the least capable of deceiving anyone, from my angle it's so obvious but if you keep your fingers from wiggling, watch the angles, and don't make a lot of noise, apparently it really does work. I'd still be practicing it without the little gullible darling.

[Brown]

A few years ago, I was working on the "classic force" in card magic. (Without going into detail, the classic force involves giving a spectator what he thinks is a totally free choice of a card from a spread deck, but making him pick the card that the performer wants him to pick. It is not a "sure shot" force, in that the spectator really does have a free choice, and he could pick the "wrong" card, but when done properly the spectator is very likely to select the card that he is supposed to select.)

To my surprise, I was quite successful in applying the classic force to adults.

But kids (ages about 7 to 10) were another matter. The classic force did not work with them at all. They weren't trying to mess me up. They just didn't respond to the situation the way adults do.

[JPK]

I was watching my DVD's of TAM3 last night and J.S. talks about this. At one point he holds up a sign that says "Please Keep Off the
the Grass". He mentions hows kids will always get it right while adults miss the second "the" because of thier own assumtions. It is those assumtions, that normally work very well for people, that a magician uses against people when they are doing thier craft.
JPK

[BPScooter]

I have noticed that kids need more "big time shuffle" on their cards than adults.... adults are more willing to believe that you really did just right there and then cut and shuffle, they assume it. Kids need to hear and see the cards going together. Does that make sense?

[opqdan]

This is an interesting topic, and is something I have noticed a few times though I am pretty new to magic, so I don't have much to base my observations of of.

At first I agreed with you that kids seem to pick up on the sleights and come up with plausible explanations more often than adults do, but I think that this is maybe a trick of my memory.

When an adult sees the trick, I chalk that up to them being experienced and me being inexperienced. When I perform for an adult, I already have the preconceived idea that I may not be able to fool them well enough.

When performing for kids though, I am always confident that they will be naive enough to never pick up on the sleight, even if it is blatant. When they do pick it up, I am then suprised because they did not fit in the stereotype that I had created for them. These incidences then will stick out in my mind when I review past performances and it will seem that children are more apt to see the trick for what it is.

I've never recorded numbers, but I would suspect that this effect (bias of some sort?) is the cause of this.

[deBergerac]

I do not pretend to be an experienced magician but I have been doing things for kids as well as for adults.
It is interesting how magicians often discuss the question if it is easy or difficult to misdirect children compared to adults when in my opinion it is only a question of different misdirection.
Some types of misdirection that I find work well with children do not work with adults and vice versa. Of course it is not set in stone which type of misdirection that works, it can be very different depending on the audience.

So far I have only been able to identify one thing that I think explain some of the difference. In a way grown ups are conditioned for certain types of misdirection. We (adults) disregard the simple explanation.

As an example take the classic force mentioned by Brown I think many adults are too smart. They assume a force cannot fool them and that the magician must rely on some other method. Since they believe that there will be no force it does not matter what card they pick and thus they will go for the force.
A child on the other hand is still careful about choosing a random card.

I almost fell for this one myself. A magician spread some random cards before me and asked me to think of one of them, he asked me to burn the image into my mind. He then mixed the cards before taking out the card I was thinking of. If I had not thought of the simple explanation it would have been a miracle. A child is more likely to think of the simple explanation than an adult who would assume that no magician would use such a simple trick.

That is one difference I see between performing for children and adults. Adults disregard the solutions they though of as kids since that would be too simple.

[NeilC]

One thing I've noticed: it's much easier to misdirect a child with a chocolate coin than a metal one. Ie they watch and genuinely try to follow something they really want.

[pjh]

If the 'force' requires a learned social convention, or is tricking the person because of what the person expects then obviously a child may not have learned the social convention or have had enough experience to expect.

However there is a simpler explanation!

Adults (and friends) are generaly far more polite about not-so-good amateur magicians and many will go along because it's not nice to expose/ridicule/criticize someone who *is* trying.

Kids on the other hand lack those social conventions and are much likelier to say the truth "Its up your sleeve", -whereas the adult who observed the same thing would probably just smile and say 'nice trick'.

[MagicFan]

Kids are very literal and a trick in which you pretend to place something into the other hand will often not fool them because they don't actually SEE it go into the hand.

[BPScooter]

OK, inspired by this thread and the "cards" thread, I did this:

Free choice (moving through cards, fan in face)
Replace at my cut
Pass
Palm
"mix up the deck"
replace
"get a special feeling" while I riffle for effect
Stop on cue
slip cut/force

WOW that was great! DO IT AGAIN!! so i did.
As I said, this kid is not easily fooled in some ways but I know how to get his goat by using Misdirection. My main goal in this was to see if I could do, like 4 or 5 sleights and not be caught. HOW DO YOU DO THAT!!! is music to my ears. :-)