Right or Left? October 13, 2007 Jill This is cool. I am left-brained. And I promise it only takes two seconds, so clicking the link won’t take you away from the 12 Days of Christmas Pussy for too long. Thanks to Charlie for the link.
Oh, that was weird. I initially saw her turning counter-clockwise, then looked at the text and saw her change direction out of the corner of my eye; when I looked back, she was moving clockwise. Did the same look-at-the-text trick, and she was back to counter-clockwise, then back again.
Ahem, that site is strange. The figure was turning anti-clockwise but just when I read the stuff about the sides of your brain it stopped for a second and changed the direction. It kept on turning clockwise until I reloaded the page. Then it was first clockwise and changed after 30 seconds or so, again. Maybe I’m just tired.
So, this illusion appears to be made by linking two clips of the woman rotating, first in one direction, then the other. You can tell if you only look at the foot she has in the air; it starts with the heel away from you and rotates toward you, then switches to the other foot. Your brain decides that one of them is correct. This is why you can switch, and why it can change without you meaning it to.
I see it moving clockwise, and can’t make it go anti-clockwise no matter what I do. And this is with Opabinia standing over my shoulder explaining the optical illusion to me. Just can’t see it. Dancer moves clockwise!
I’m so right brained- no amount of concentration could make her go counter-clockwise. And friends like to joke that my right hand is just a vestigial limb.
I see it the same way as Mandolin does. To me, the dancer’s left leg is the axis around which she spins clockwise. I’ve tried to see her going counter-clockwise, and I can’t do it. At all.
Hmm… before I couldn’t make her go clockwise, but I just looked again and now I can’t make her go counter-clockwise. Damn. Maybe the website is a trick…
I got it right brainers! I stared at the reflection of her foot for a minute and it went counter clockwise, then looked away and it went back to clockwise!
Am not sure this has much validity. Though I have more traits befitting a right-brain thinker….I also have quite a few from the left as well. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel most human beings have some variation on the left/right traits…I have yet to meet anyone who is completely one or the other.
Am not sure this has much validity. Though I have more traits befitting a right-brain thinker….I also have quite a few from the left as well. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel most human beings have some variation on the left/right traits…I have yet to meet anyone who is completely one or the other. But look! Most of us see the dancer moving in both directions! So clearly this experiment is entirely, flawlessly accurate and entirely valid.
Yeah exholt, this is definitely a pop-psych thing that’s been way overstated. Wikipedia has a pretty good article: Lateralization of brain function. The toy is still cool.
My (dominant) right brain loves this test, but my (still there) left brain thinks it’s a bit of a crock. Of course now I feel like an Easter Bunny or Santa killer or something. I just sat and stared at it for a bit (after not being able to make it do anything but go clockwise), and it switched directions. Look a bit longer and it switches back, and keeps doing that over and over. Now, if someone in the same place sees it moving one way while a person beside them sees it moving another, at the very same time, I’ll admit I’m wrong. It’s still fun, though!
It looks like they spliced two clips of her turning in different directions, and alternated them at random. Do other people see that she always has her left arm and leg extended when she turns counterclockwise, and vice versa?
kazul, I think the point of her being a silhouette is that her “left arm and leg” can become her right arm and leg when she’s turning the other way.
There’s a long discussion of it here: http://matociquala.livejournal.com/1229629.html Me, I can see it both ways, with effort. (Look at it out of the corner of my eye and it can switch randomly really quickly. Look straight, and it might go one way, then the other.)
I can now consciously change the direction, but only by staring at the reflection of the axis-foot for a while.
Ditto 5 and 7. But I’m right-handed! Though I did play around with an incredibly cool magnetic brainwave thing, and it seemed like my brain was organised in the opposite way from most people’s– ie most people like having their right hippocampus stimulated but for me it was TORTURE and stimulation of the left hippocampus was really nice. So maybe my brain is weird even though I’m right-handed. Or maybe the dancer doesn’t mean much. Interesting tho.
I see the thing go clockwise, my brother counterclockwise. However, we agree that the “descriptions” do not fit us, and we are the opposite: I function as a “lefty,” he as a “righty.”
It looks like they spliced two clips of her turning in different directions, and alternated them at random. Do other people see that she always has her left arm and leg extended when she turns counterclockwise, and vice versa? Ahh, but my partner could look at it the opposite way as me at the same time. I’m also of the opinion that everyone is a mix of both to varying degrees. I saw anti-clockwise first, can change it back and forth at will after some practice 🙂 P.S. I like how “most” of us should see anti-clockwise first… I thought more women were supposed to be predominantly right-brained??
It’s two different clips, and after a while it changes and goes the opposite direction. I don’t think it has anything to do with right brain-left brain.
Unless my mom and I just both think exactly alike and changed our perceptions at the exact same time, which I don’t think is that likely. Started out to the right for me, and I was frustrated I couldn’t change it. Then I called my mom over, and it was still going clockwise. Then all of a sudden we both said “hey it’s going the other way.” Tried to force it to go back to clockwise but couldn’t and then we both noticed it change back at the same time once again.
I see it moving clockwise, and can’t make it go anti-clockwise no matter what I do. And this is with Opabinia standing over my shoulder explaining the optical illusion to me. Just can’t see it. Dancer moves clockwise! Ditto.
It’s not a spliced clip. It’s a neurological effect called the Pulfrich effect (I learned about it in school). It has to do with the relative brightness of the image in the eyes – if you hold sunglasses in front of one eye when you look at it, the image’ll go one way, if you hold them in front of the other eye, it’ll go the other way. This clip is a bit too complicated to really steer well (the expectations of human movement trip you up), but when you focus on the standing foot, you can make her move side-to-side, not in circles. What this has to do with brain laterality, I’m not sure. People have one dominant eye (which may project a brighter image into your brain), but this doesn’t correspond with the dominant brain half. Still really nifty, though!
I think Maartje must be right. When I squint and darken the image (sunglasses would require getting off my ass!) she turns counter-clockwise, every time; when I blink and go back to full vision, she goes clockwise, every time. Which doesn’t sound much like a left-right thing to me!
Dr. Confused, Thank you for the brain lateralization link. My (dominant) right brain loves this test, but my (still there) left brain thinks it’s a bit of a crock. Of course now I feel like an Easter Bunny or Santa killer or something. Agreed. I see it going clockwise…counter-clockwise…and back again. As for worrying about feeling like a Easter Bunny and Santa killer…no need to worry…both have been well protected by legions of loyal fans, some clergy, and marketing/PR specialists for years. 🙂
Oh thanks zuzu, really…now I’m obsessed with this damn thing. I can only seem to see it go counterclockwise when I stare at it from the corner of my right eye. I slowly turn to try to see it fully, but it goes back to clockwise.
There’s actually some science behind this kind of thing. I once saw a talk by a professor who studies “perceptual rivalry” such as this. The hemispheres of our brains trade off periods of high and low activity, so which direction you see may also tell you something about which side of your brain is currently more active. They call it the “nasal cycle” because the elevated blood flow in one side of the body causes one nostril to be harder to breath through. Everyone should be able to see it switch direction by simply staring at it consistently for a minute or so.
Try as I might I cannot make the thing go counter-clockwise, and neither can anyone in my house – and we’re all right-handed.
Now, if someone in the same place sees it moving one way while a person beside them sees it moving another, at the very same time, I’ll admit I’m wrong. Husband and I were able to see it different ways different times. Also, I’m able to change it by squinting, too. I’ll be trying to master this all night instead of working on my paper!
Keith saw it going counter-clockwise at the exact same time I saw it going clockwise and my daughter saw it switching back and forth over and over again. We were all looking at it at exactly the same time.
I wonder if the tendency to see it change from clockwise to counter-clockwise out of the corner of your eye once you start reading the text has something to do with the left side of your brain kicking it because you’re reading. I think it’s quite possible that for many people who don’t necessarily favor one side of the brain over the other, if what they are looking at first is a picture, the right side thinks it’s supposed to be in charge, but then if you read text, the left side takes over.
i can really only see clockwise. if i scroll down so only her legs are visible she shimmies back and forth. watching that made me kind of nauseated.
I’m a hard-core atheist astrology-non-believing rationalist. I can’t see any non-clockwise movement. Maybe it’s because I’m only a few minutes away from my local bar where I complained about the Pimp-glorifying documentary playing in my local where the new (fucking asshole) bartender tried to get my good friend, the manager, to bar me b/c I objected to the show on TV? Who knows? I can’t believe (no, that’s a lie, I totally believe it) that this asshole physically intimidated me in front of my best guy friend to try and rationalize that I didn’t like the sexist, disgusting show because he thinks I wasn’t offended, but I WANTED TO REDUCE MY BAR TAB. What a fucking asshole. I have more male friends than female. Yet I still have to deal with this disgusting shit. It pisses me off more than you can imagine. Oh, wait, you can TOTALLY imagine it.
P.S. I like how “most” of us should see anti-clockwise first… I thought more women were supposed to be predominantly right-brained?? Um, no? Isn’t it that right-handed people (the majority of men and women) are left-brained? And I am still searching for that article which took a look at all studies on brain sides communication and whether men or women really had any difference and came to the conclusion that the samples were either not random or just too small and all too often resulted in men and women are just as different as the woman or man next too you but not because of their chromosomes. Anyone bookmarked that?
If you covver the left half of the figure with your hand (or a piece of paper), then it gets easier to get her to dance clockwise. Similarly If you cover the right side you can see her go anticlockwise. The effect stays when you uncover the side.
Interesting, I watched a few minutes, and she was anti-clockwise, and I read the text to the side, and she was still anti-clockwise, and then I held the paper to the right of her covering one half and she went Clockwise, and then stayed that way a few after I removed the paper, I did it a few more times and I now my brain hurts cause she is well.. Um Suspended between anti-clockwise and clockwise and my brain refuses to see her move. LOL God my brain hurts now. It hurt just to the left of the center behind my eye. Also made me nauseous.
Tried everything mentioned, from sunglasses to squinting to reading text to staring at it to blinking to imagining it going the other way. But it is and stays counter-clockwise. And now I’m nauseous!
Tried it sober and not pissed off. Still only clockwise, no matter what. Also, sorry for previous OT angry rant.
If I tilt my head up and look at it from underneath my glasses, she seems to swtich to counterclockwise, while she goes back to clockwise if I tilt my head down and look over my glasses. Frankly, I’ve been watching her long enough that I’m just seeing the component parts ie: a torso rotating on a leg. It’s rather disturbing that way.
this is crazy, there is no way that stinking dancer is spinning counter-clockwise. Excuse me while I go stick my head in the sand.
Victory! If I concentrate long enough on the toe of the leg she’s standing on, she flips and starts turning clockwise. 🙂 I was going mad here.
First the dancer went clockwise, then I “made” her go counter-clockwise (power!). All of a sudden the dancer went BOTH directions simultaniously. I heard a rushing sound and a voice say “You have crossed the threshold!” Should I be scared? Also, wasn’t the whole left-brain right-brain thing discredited over 25 years ago?
Cool. Like a lot of people I saw it go one way, read the text and out of the corner of my eye it switched.
As far as legit science goes on brains and handedness, (almost all) right-handers and the majority of left-handers have language function lateralized in their left hemisphere. A small proportion of the left-handed population (15% is the figure I heard) have reverse-lateralized brains with language in the right hemisphere, and another 15% or so of lefties have bilateral distribution. The whole left-brained/right-brained personality dichotomy makes for a fun Blogthings quiz, but it doesn’t have much grounding in neuroscience. For just a minute or so, I was able to blink and see the dancer going clockwise, then blink again and see it counter-clockwise, then blink it back to clockwise again. It felt like telekinesis! 🙂 But now she’s back to all clockwise, all the time.
I saw her going counter-clockwise earlier, and totally couldn’t imagine how anyone else could see it clockwise. I finally got to see it clockwise by bringing my finger near the screen and tracing it in a clockwise circle, going from side to side at the same rate her foot did. Fun!
I saw it clockwise immediate, and then later could occasionally see it counter-clockwise by looking away or blinking. But mostly it was clockwise. Showed it to boyfriend, and he immediately saw clockwise, then finally got it switched to counter-clockwise and then was stuck there. It switched for me several times while he was insisting it was all one way. I doubt it has much to do with right/left brain, but it sure was fun.
I also can only see it clockwise. i’ve tried hard to see it the other way, and i even understand the illusion and how it COULD be going both ways, but i can’t. but on all the other right/left brained tests I’ve gotten 50/50 or close to it. And i’m right handed! who knows…
Ha, what a funny joke. It’s even funnier when you move ur mouse to switch to another tab and then it goes the other direction. I had fun doing that on purpose. She goes left, she goes right, she goes left, and then right again. Ah, the simple things in life.