Rate My Professor Anthony Barnhart

Professor Anthony Barnhart serves as Associate Professor of Psychological Science and Interim Chair of the Psychological Science Department at Carthage College. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive science from Arizona State University, and his B.A. from Augustana College. Barnhart's research examines the processes underlying handwritten word perception, the science of magic, attentional deployment in time, and inattentional blindness. He investigates how professional magicians' intuitive understandings of attention and perception align with or challenge formal scientific models, bridging performance magic with experimental psychology.

Barnhart has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. Key publications include "Identifying the boundaries of magic: A qualitative study of expert magicians" (The Journal of Performance Magic, 2025), "Tactical blinking in magicians: A tool for self- and other-deception" (Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2022), "Avoiding potential pitfalls in visual search and eye-movement experiments: A tutorial review" (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2021), "Microsaccades reflect the dynamics of misdirected attention in magic" (Journal of Eye Movement Research, 2019), "Blinded by magic: Eye-movements reveal the misdirection of attention" (Frontiers in Psychology, 2014), "Orthographic and phonological neighborhood effects in handwritten word perception" (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2015), and "Interpreting chicken-scratch: Lexical access for handwritten words" (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2010). In 2025, he published three additional papers: one on magic's aesthetic boundaries in The Journal of Performance Magic, one on magician personalities in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, and a commentary critiquing perceptual theory in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. His scholarly impact is recognized by his election as a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society in 2020 and an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant in 2017 for acquiring an eye-tracking system ($37,190). Barnhart has delivered a keynote address at the American Psychological Association Convention (2020) and numerous invited lectures worldwide on magic, perception, and psychological science. He contributed as a consultant and teacher to the book Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about our Everyday Deceptions (2010).