This was discussed many months ago on a gifted listserv and I just saw it blogged about again. It’s intriguing, so I thought I’d share.
As Dave Munger writes:
While the illusion can’t actually determine whether you’re “right-brained” or “left-brained,” we were curious about what actually affects people’s perception of the illusion. Over 1,600 readers took our online survey about the illusion. What’s interesting about the illusion is that it’s ambiguous — it can appear to be spinning both clockwise and counter-clockwise.
It took me awhile, but now I can make her spin both ways. How about you? Your kids?
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Okay, that’s just plain weird. The first time I loaded your page, I distinctly saw her spinning counter-clockwise. Then not 10 minutes later, I re-loaded it and she was spinning clockwise.
I wonder if it has to do with what I was thinking of just prior to seeing it? The first time, I was thinking about the humanities in regards to your post on late bloomers. The second time, I was thinking about my brother & music technology.
That’s an interesting thought. When I first look at her she is always spinning clockwise. I can make her reverse if I kind of cross my eyes or stare at her feet.
I can’t *make* her spin either way. She just changes every so often. If I hadn’t been watching along with my daughter and heard her insisting that the direction changed at different times than I saw it changing, I’d have thought it was a hoax and the picture actually did change. At one point I closed one eye and she STOPPED — now that was bizarre. Turned out it was a hiccup on my computer and the image *had* stopped for a moment.