This interesting optical effect is presented as a test for Right Brain vs Left Brain thinking. My sample of one doesn’t support this – I saw the dancer going clockwise which is supposed to indicate Right Brain thinking, and I’m about as Left Brain as they come. But with a little effort you can get whichever one you want. Unlike with static illusions, it’s quite hard to figure out what cues you’re using to orient the motion.
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
John Quiggin 
Definitely – a nice picture
Beautiful! It’s a struggle for me to see her turning anti-clockwise and hard to convince my brain, closing eyes and relaxing and picturing her turning the way I choose, to see it that way when my eyes open.
Very interesting – there were two of us who saw the dancer going opposite directions at the same time and when I saw it the other way so did the other person see it the opposite way!
It’s not a test of right-brain left-brain thinking at all – certainly the R/L distinction is out of fashion in psychology. This illusion absolutely does not indicate all the list of things in that article (e.g., impetuousness, etc).
Instead the spinning girl is an optical illusion, which illustrates a shortcut in the way that the visual system works. What’s happening in that picture is that, because it’s a silhouette, there’s just as much information to support the idea that it’s going clockwise as anticlockwise. I suspect that whether you see it one way or another has got to do with the angle you’re looking at it from, the angle of the screen, the state of mood you’re in, the position of the girl when you first look at the screen, etc etc, as any right/left brain stuff.
tim.
Thanks John – that’s a fanstastic link.
I found by blinking quickly a few times you can easily reverse the illusion.
I’m sure its a similar effect to when using a strobe light on a spinning car fan when doing the ignition timing.
This particular illusion was a real struggle for me. Despite my best efforts my brain wouldn’t make her turn anti-clockwise for anything more than a quarter turn, at which point the clockwise action would spring back into effect. The determination to see this as clockwise motion seemed extremely dominant. In the end I managed to make the pattern switch by covering the top half of the picture and watching the legs only. Once I had that part of the picture moving anti-clockwise I had to cover the bottom half and learn to see the anti-clockwise pattern for the other half. After that I could then uncover the whole image and see the full figure turn anti-clockwise for a several full turns. However ultimately the clockwise perception would snap back into effect.
The exercise does say something about peoples ability to look upon the same data set and to perceive radically opposite views of reality.
I have noticed previously in areas of grammar that I have some difficulties with some forms of pattern shifting. I frequently allow the word “their” or “there” to incorrectly dominate my writing. So I’ll use the spelling t-h-e-i-r for both words even though it is appropriate only in one instance. Then a week later I’ll be using the spelling t-h-e-r-e for both words. Within a given document my brain will get stuck on one of the two versions of spelling. This will happen in spite of the fact that when somebody pulls me up and I focus consciously then I do actually recognise the mistake quite clearly. Although it is more embarrassing than debilitating it is something that I have struggled with my whole life.
what if you can make it spin either way at will? am i omni-talented? or scatter-brained?
i suspect the relation between the mechanical functioning of the brain and intellectual endeavor will become increasingly clear, and ‘free will’ will become an amusing concept like phlogiston.
won’t matter though, by then a command chip will be installed in every babies brain, to save the vast amounts now wasted on directing the sheep with training and media.
By apply a bit of logic I managed to reverse my perception of her direction. I concentrated on her extended foot, and told myself that a particular position was indeed either in front or behind. Immediately the rest of the picture would seem to fit with this perception. I could then change my perception of her direction at will.
Nothing to do with right vs left brain, except for those who would get excited over what is apparently a nude figure.
Al,
I suspect, judging by the rest of your comment, that you’re scatter brained.
Of course this is not a good conclusion, since the same holds for me. It’s easiest to reverse the direction when she is in near profile. When she faces to the right of screen, it’s easy to get her to go clockwise and when she faces left, to reverse the direction to anticlockwise.
You will note, by the by, that the dancer is phlogiston enhanced, given the way she is above the floor.
Fascinating. I found I could make it switch by concentrating on the reflection of the foot, then viewing the whole figure. I assume this is because the foot alone is much simpler, with fewer cues to reinforce the illusion of motion in one direction or the other.
Another point. If this test really indicates lateral brain dominance, then spontaneous reversals presumably signal lateral switching. I once heard Prof Jack Pettigrew (UQ) talking about this – he said it is possible to control switching by pouring cold water in one ear, or forced breathing through one nostril only (activates the opposite side of the brain).
I couldn’t get the figure to change direction by pouring cold water in my ears, just got into a mess. But the uni-lateral breathing actually seemed to work, as it did for a couple of people with me. Or maybe we were just talking ourselves into it.
“I saw the dancer going clockwise which is supposed to indicate Right Brain thinking, and I’m about as Left Brain as they come.”
Me too (although on my platform there are frequent halts to the spinning, which may make a difference for al I know).
It seems to be similar to watching the edges of cube drawn on paper; the rear and the front keep interchanging (similar phenomenon occurs with lunar landscape); depth perception changes. If the moving leg is perceived in front of the pivot leg, the movement is clockwise and otherwise anticlockwise. If you want only clockwise motion just keep looking at the pivot leg. The difference from the cube perception is that some effort is needed from going one to the other.
That seems to be my reading of the puzzle around midnight.
Now, I am not sure of what I said. That argument does not seem to apply to this illusion:
http://www.moillusions.com/2007/10/spinning-ferry-wheel-illusion.html
I think I tend to see the “faster moving” suspended leg in front, jutting out, when you first look, then the illusion is maintained. If I look to one side so I can can see movement but no clear 3d-ness then move my eyes in you can pick it up either way by timing it. I can’t kick the illusion until I look away again. On the basis of assumed normality this must apply to everyone.
Right brain, left brain? Not really. I think it’s just timing…
…mind you, a right brainer might be just a bit more attracted to something moving into the right visual field so tend to lock on one way, or the other way, or something, perhaps…
I tried every trick I could think of, along with those above and could not get even a hint of her turning anti-clockwise.
I think I’m pretty left brained, so it the stats aren’t exactly supporting the theory.
After a few days of reading about this in other blogs and Wikipedia, I am beginning to think that this is a research topic. One piece which gave an inkling of understanding is the Wikipedia article on multistable perception:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multistable_perception
This bit in the article “Transitions from one percept to its alternative are called perceptual reversals. They are spontaneous and stochastic events which cannot be eliminated by intentional efforts (although some control over the alternation process is learnable). Reversal rates vary drastically between stimuli and observers, and has been found to be slower for people with Bipolar disorder (“sticky” interhemispheric switch in bipolar disorder) ” suggests that there may be some role of left/right brains.
Not really too excited by “left brain / right brain” hypothesizing but agree these perceptual phenomena are a rich and fascinating field for research, and this must be one of the nicest examples. I disagree with the “events which cannot be eliminated by intentional efforts” claim in Wikipedia because now I can see the dancer as turning whichever way by the simple (perhaps peculiar to me) method of choosing to anticipate that the swinging knee will pass in front of or alternatively behind the other, and she reliably seems then to be turning in the chosen direction. Actually not only “alternatively” but alternately too – I can also see her as swinging from one side to the other, never completing a full turn.
Also nice is that on this machine at least she spins at what my mind perceives to be a “soothing” rate. I do like this illusion.