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THERE’S more to ventriloquism than keeping your lips shut. The secret, says
Jean Vroomen, is to distract the audience with well-timed dummy movements.
Vroomen and his team at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and at the Free
University of Brussels say this exploits a reflex brain reaction, where we think
a sound comes from a source of movement. In an experiment to mimic the effect,
they played a noise directly in front of a volunteer while a flash of light
appeared from the side. Most subjects thought the sound came from the direction
of the light (Acta Psychologica, vol 108,…