Many of you have probably seen this animation of a spinning dancer silhouette from the Daily Telegraph, as it’s been making the rounds on various blogs and social networking sites. It’s a neat animation, but the blurb also states the following:
The Right Brain vs Left Brain test … do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.
Personally, I can’t think of anything that would back up their source-less assertion, and a quick literature search doesn’t turn up anything either. I’ve chalked it up as a yet another misinformative popular-press write-up, but was wondering if any readers had further insight.
me and my friends just got into a huge screaming match over this, trying to make each other see each way. after a LONG time i was finally able to see both ways, but i have to sort of look somewhere else, picture her going the other way and then look back. I read somewhere that it’s not actually a dancer spinning, but a 2-D dancer going back and forth but our brains are programmed to see it as a 3-D object spinning, which has nothing to do with left-brain vs right-brain dominance.
Been making a game of this for over a year. I try to see consecutive reversals (every half turn). My record had been 5. Third try tonight it clicked. Saw over 50 times until I quit. Looked away couple of minutes and it was still automatic when I tried again. I can’t do it if i look at her head.
Hi Neil and Emily
I’m going to test the correlation between the spinning dancer and my right brain left brain multiple quiz at
http://thebrainteacher.com/BrainBalanceQuiz.html
This may put the issue to rest!
Best wishes,
Jonathan Crabtree
http://thebrainteacher.com
I cannot tell a lie, that really heepld.
Surprisingly, the first four people I shared her with claimed clockwise rotation. How do you see her? I found that on first glance, she turned clockwise for me, and would continue to do so for as long as I cared to look. Then I found that if I started to read the first paragraph again, my peripheral vision changed her direction of rotation, which then would remain constant until I once again switched from central vision to peripheral vision. What is amazing about this test is certainly there can be a change in the direction of rotation, but when it happens, SHE ACTUALLY PIVOTS ON THE OPPOSITE LEG!