An Impressive Impressionist

In my previous post, I discussed the phenomenon of mistaking one person for another. You see a person whose features are so similar to someone else's that your mind mistakenly concludes that you have seen that other person. In my case, while watching a movie, I momentarily mistook Kirk Douglas for Sean Penn. The moment passed quickly enough, and once again, it was Kirk Douglas before me.

This experience is quite similar to the optical illusions we've all seen: you're looking at a drawing of an old woman, and then, all of a sudden, you are instead looking at a young, elegant one.

What is so amusing and entertaining about these optical illusions is that the very same visual stimuli that one moment cause your mind to believe that it is seeing a certain image just a split-second later cause your mind to perceive a completely different image. Your mind is in effect saying: "Wait a minute! I'm looking at the exact same person I was a moment ago -- so why am I now all of a sudden seeing a completely different person?! And I thought seeing is believing."

Now even though in both of the above situations your mind is being "tricked", there is an interesting difference between the two:

In the case of the "Dopplegänger Dilemma", where the source of the illusion is the similarity between two different people, the confusion arises because the visual stimuli being presented to your eyes are similar to the mental image you have stored in your memory for a different person (similar hair, facial structure, etc.), causing a mismatch.

On the other hand, in the case of the Old-Young Lady, something very different is at work. Our eyes see the picture and transmit its visual stimuli to our brain. Our brain then extracts from the totality of that picture various elements, and interprets each one. It then combines the interpretations of those elements and concludes that it has seen an old woman.

When a moment later the mind suddenly sees instead the young woman, it is now extracting different elements from the picture, and interpreting them differently, and voilà! it comes up with a different interpretation of what is has seen.

Now all of the above is an introduction to another illusory experience I had a few months ago.

I've been familiar with actor Sammy Davis, Jr. for decades. But I was unaware until a few years ago that:

• He began his career as a performer at the tender age of 3.
• He performed with his father for many years.
• He was a multi-talented entertainer, his talents including: singing, dancing, acting and doing impressions.
• He was enormously popular in the 1950's, far more so than I had ever realized.

A few months ago, I saw a clip of Sammy Davis, Jr. He was doing impressions of various famous actors, and his ability to duplicate their voices was hugely entertaining.

But then he did an impression which absolutely astounded me. Now Sammy Davis, Jr. was a small, short, black man, and the actor he was mimicking was a tall, large, white man. (I have since forgotten which actor it was.) And for his impression of this actor, Sammy did not utter one word, relying instead wholly on visual prompts.

Sammy did such a superb job of duplicating this man's facial expressions and body language that at one point, all of a sudden, I was no longer looking at Sammy Davis, Jr. -- instead, this other actor who looks absolutely nothing like Sammy Davis, Jr. appeared before me. So completely had Sammy's mannerisms duped my brain. That moment was as much an unexpected surprise to me, as if I were to turn around right now and see an elephant standing in my room.

So on the one hand, my eyes were seeing Sammy, a man who looked nothing like the other actor, and the image of Sammy was obviously being transmitted to my brain. But at the same time, Sammy's expert duplications of this man's mannerisms were simultaneously being transmitted to my brain as well. What is so striking is that with a wink and slight shift of his body, Sammy was able to make my mind completely ignore the overwhelming visual evidence and see instead the image that those oh so very subtle cues conjured up. What a feat!

Recall the two types of optical illusions I discerned earlier in this post: (a) the "Dopplegänger Dilemma, where the illusion arises from two images appearing the same; and (b) The Old-Young Lady, where the source of illusion arises from your mind extracting different clues from an image and interpreting them differently.

Into which category did Sammy's impression fall?