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 :)