Supposed Right brain vs Left brain test

[jack]

The link going around is here, from an Australian newspaper. The image shows a silhouette of a dancer rotating in the air. Is it rotating clockwise or anticlockwise?

People seem to see it one way or the other, though most people can swap the way they see it. The paper says it depends on being right-brained or left-brained. There are some analyses floating about from before the paper made the link, but I can't find anything definitive.

Logically, the silhouette *ought* to be perceivable either way -- if there are insufficient depth cues, and you cover up the shadow, it ought to be front-back symmetric. But to me it definitely *looks* clockwise[1].

Can anyone tell if there's anything special about the image? Does anyone know if right/left-brain-ness really has any bearing?

[1] Bonus points for saying "from the top or the bottom". From the top, please.

ETA: No-one finds any support that this has anything to do with left/right brains, that seems to have appeared with the news article. So not necessarily false, but doubtful, given that it has no source.

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

http://ofb.net/~whuang/imgs/spin/ triplicates[1] the image adds some hint lines as if the figure were facing forward, or backward. But I still see it as clockwise! With, the wrong way round, some random white lines in front.

[1] Wow, I didn't expect that to be a word! Cool :)

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I cannot see the original image as anything other than clockwise. With that triplicate page, looking only at the anti-clockwise image, and screening off the top and bottom portions of the figure I can - just - get her spinning anti-clockwise, but as soon as I look at the whole figure again she spins clockwise, but with some odd lines on her body.

She's spinning clockwise, she just is. But at least I can *almost* get the anti-clockwise view now, even if only with visual aids.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! I've been introduced to this from four different sources and discussed it with four different sets of people and never been able to see it as anything but clockwise, by any means. But the white lines on the rightmost image do enable me to see it anticlockwise if I concentrate. However, it does look as though the neutral one in the middle (as well as the clockwise one on the left) are mirror-reversed relative to the anticlockwise one.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! I've been introduced to this from four different sources and discussed it with four different sets of people

When I saw it twice I thought I'd better get on and post it :)

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Looking at that triplicates page, I'm very confused! When I first looked at the image, in isolation, I saw it spinning anti-clockwise. When I looked at the triplicates page, I saw it spinning clockwise! Even when I removed the clockwise one, and then the anti-clockwise one, it continued spinning clockwise!

We hack brains

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh no, now you're stuck, you'll never be sure if you were right about what you first saw :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php

Has some more comments that say it isn't really a right/left brain thing, but doesn't clear it up for me.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

If I look at it directly, it rotates clockwise, and I cannot easily make it rotate anticlockwise.

If I look at it from the corner of my eye, it rotates anti, then if I keep looking at it, and change my focus so I'm looking directly, it stays rotating anti. I have to look away to switch back.

(I've not looked at the interpretations yet, so I'm not sure what that is supposed to "mean".)

[sonicdrift.livejournal.com]

That's what I get, except I can't get it to switch back to clockwise now!

Heres how I see things

[(Anonymous)]

we can deduce one of two things from this exercise:
many of you (who only see it as rotating clockwise) probably all look at it the same way and either cannot or will not make her spin the other way (perceptibly) -OR- she actually is spinning clockwise and the LB/RB argument can be thrown out the window for this dancer chick.

I can see it both ways fairly easily...btw i just stared at her butt the whole time ;)

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

I was just looking at that, independently! (Directed from New Scientist blog).

I saw it as clockwise first... then, it was going the other way. Have you got it to go the other way yet?

Insight being beyond me, I will merely say "that's really cool".

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Have you got it to go the other way yet?

No. I decided I probably had little to gain by going on trying :)

[cornute.livejournal.com]

Backing up, what exactly does it mean to be right- or left-brained? Does it really objectively mean anything, or is it as full of fluff* as that "indigo children" thing?

*No offense if this is one of your pet ideas, but I think it's silly.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's a gigantic extent to be full of fluff... I never really thought about it. AIUI the brain is asymmetric, but I don't know to what extent using that to categorise people is valid, if at all.

[cornute.livejournal.com]

"AIUI the brain is asymmetric, but I don't know to what extent using that to categorise people is valid, if at all."

That's my understanding as well-- I'm not sure how, without some sophisticated medical tech, one could tell whether a person was using their left hemisphere or right predominantly at all!

[simont]

I'd never heard of indigo children before seeing this post, and frankly I'm not sure I don't wish I still hadn't. Good grief.

I'm particularly mindboggled by this quotation in the Wikipedia entry:

"I'm an avatar," Dusk said. "I can recognize the four elements of earth, wind, water and fire. The next avatar won't come for 100 years."

I have a strange mental image of Dusk looking at a pile of soil and saying "There, that's earth!", and for some reason believing that he's the only person in 100 years capable of telling that.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of indigo children before seeing this post, and frankly I'm not sure I don't wish I still hadn't. Good grief.

Looking at that definition, I think I must have been an indigo child. Fortunately, I think I've mostly grown out of it.

[cornute.livejournal.com]

*giggle* I'm sorry to have brought it up! But now you have something else to think about those wicked little children whose parents let them run a-havocking everywhere, don't you?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. Me neither, for that matter, but when I looked at my comment notifications there was an ad about it :O I'm just too used to crazy ideas. Though I'm not sure if this is more about annoying precocious children which was extended to imply psychic powers, or vice versa. I don't think I want to know.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

See here and here for skepticism about the right/left brain thing. I saw the link going round a few months ago without any of the right/leftness going with it.

[simont]

I haven't been able to make it appear anticlockwise to me at all.

I did manage to consciously perceive one thing which might justify my subconscious visual response: if you examine the path traced by the toes of her lifted foot, it's not a straight-back-and-forth path but an ellipse-like curve. Her foot is higher up (in the projection) when it's travelling L->R than it is when travelling R->L, or in other words her toes are tracing that ellipse clockwise.

On the reasonable assumption that we're looking at her from a normal eye level (either seated or standing, but in any case above her foot), we are seeing that ellipse from above, and so if it appears to be traced clockwise then that's because it is being traced clockwise. So that fixes her direction of rotation. For her to be rotating anticlockwise we'd have to be looking at the path of her foot from below, either because our POV was from very near the floor or because she was deliberately lifting her foot higher when facing us.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I keep expecting some cue like that to make it suddenly click for me -- eg. if I imagine looking from a different direction, it would suddenly be anticlockwise. But it hasn't happened yet.

Or I wonder if the rotating and bobbing make conflicting cues that different people see different ones of, but I've no idea if that's true. One would have to generate a lot of such images with varying coordinates and see which have the effect.

[emperor]

I see it going clockwise, and cannot reverse this.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

She only goes clockwise for me. I've not encountered a credible source for the left/right brain thing yet.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

She goes clockwise for me, though I can make her go anticlockwise by covering up the top half of her body and just concentrating on her feet and shadow for about 20 seconds - then she goes anticlockwise quite happily for a while, until I stop concentrating, and she switches back to clockwise. It seems to be getting easier with practice: I can make her go anticlockwise for several turns now, while the first time I managed it she only did one turn before switching.

[rcv1.livejournal.com]

I mainly see her going anticlockwise - occasionally she switches for a moment or two. Maybe it's an age thing, or only if you wear varifocals - or for those who can't tell their left from their right :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I don't know. There's obviously *something*, since almost everyone seems to see it one way or another. Unless it's just chance of which way you see it first... It seems clockwise is a majority, here and on first class. But I don't know if that's because of the sort of people, or if it's just more common.

[fanf]

The shadow disambiguates it. Perhaps the purported optical illusion would actually work if it were removed.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought, but then I wasn't sure. (Just to be clear -- you think it disambiguates it in what direction?)

At first I thought the shadow leg was rotating clockwise on the floor, going out of sight below the bottom of the image on the lower half of its circle. Then I thought it was going anticlockwise, but going out of sight when the dancer bobbed higher. I'm not sure which is accurate, but now I can see it going either way, but even if I cover it up it looks to me like the dancer is going clockwise.

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

I can see it moving in both directions. After brief experimentation, making the image stop by right clicking to save it, then cancelling so it starts again, makes it change direction for me. Most peculiar.

[teleute.livejournal.com]

I could only see her going ACW until I looked at the list of right and left brain behaviour. Then she switched, and now I can make it switchwhenever I want :-)

[drswirly.livejournal.com]

At first, I saw her going anti-clockwise, but then I blinked and found her going clockwise. That was confusing. I tried to make her go the other way again, and couldn't at first. So I looked to the side to ask hilarityallen about it, and when I turned back, it was anti-clockwise again.

I found vyvyan's suggestion helpful: I covered the top half up, and I could then see the legs going whichever way I wanted. Uncovering the top half left it going in that direction. And now it's easy. By concentrating on the legs, I can make her change direction - even every half-rotation, so she seems to bounce from side to side, rather than rotating.

(Perhaps my finding this easy is some sort of compensation for never having got a "Magic Eye" stereogram to work.)

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

I saw her anti clockwise first but I can change the direction pretty easily.