Takuya Theory: A Cognitive Framework for Analyzing the Temporal Structure of Magic Performance

Takuya Theory is an exploratory cognitive framework for analyzing the temporal structure of magic performance from the spectator’s perspective. The framework examines how local representations are formed, maintained, and used to constrain predictions during a performance, and how they may be re-evaluated following an unexpected observation. Its central concepts include hypothesis space, compression, anchors, prediction constraint, prediction error, collapse, and post-event re-evaluation. Rather than proposing new general cognitive mechanisms, Takuya Theory organizes existing ideas from predictive processing, belief formation, attention, and related research into a performance-level framework for analyzing and designing magic effects. The present version substantially revises and expands the earlier framework published as A Cognitive Model of Magical Experience Based on Prediction Error. In particular, collapse is no longer treated as a necessary condition for all magical experience, and the framework more explicitly distinguishes local performance representations from general world-model commitments. Boundary conditions, alternative accounts, falsification criteria, and directions for empirical testing are also developed. The framework should be regarded as exploratory rather than as an empirically established general theory. Its concepts and proposed relationships require further comparison with existing constructs and empirical validation.