The Spinning Dancer, also known as the Silhouette Illusion, is a kinetic, bistable, animated optical illusion originally distributed as a GIF animation showing a silhouette of a pirouetting female dancer. The illusion, created in 2003 by Japanese web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara, involves the apparent direction of motion of the figure. Some observers initially see the figure as spinning clockwise (as viewed from above) and some counterclockwise. Additionally, some may see the figure suddenly spin in the opposite direction.
Effect
The illusion derives from the lack of visual cues for depth. For instance, as the dancer's arms move from viewer's left to right, it is possible to view her arms passing between her body and the viewer (that is, in the foreground of the picture, in which case she would be circling counterclockwise on her right foot) and it is also possible to view her arms as passing behind the dancer's body (that is, in the background of the picture, in which case she is seen circling clockwise on her left foot). When she is facing to the left or to the right, the breasts and ponytail clearly define the direction she is facing, although there is ambiguity in which leg is which. However, as she moves away from facing to the left (or from facing to the right), the dancer can be seen facing in either of two directions. At first, these two directions are fairly close to each other (both left, say, but one facing slightly forward, the other facing slightly backward) but they become further away from each other until they reach a position where her ponytail and breasts are in line with the viewer (so that neither the breasts nor the ponytail are seen so readily). In this position, she could be facing either away from the viewer or towards the viewer, so that the two possible positions are 180 degrees apart. Another aspect of this illusion can be triggered by placing a mirror vertically beside the image. The natural expectation would be for the normal image and its reflection to spin in opposite directions. This does not necessarily happen, and provides a paradoxical situation where both dancers appear to spin in the same direction.
Psychology of visual perception It has been established that the silhouette is more often seen rotating clockwise than counterclockwise. According to an online survey of over 1600 participants, approximately two thirds of observers initially perceived the silhouette to be rotating clockwise. In addition, observers who initially perceived a clockwise rotation had more difficulty experiencing the alternative.
These results can be explained by a psychological study providing evidence for a viewing-from-above bias that influences observers' perceptions of the silhouette. Kayahara's dancer is presented with a camera elevation slightly above the horizontal plane. Consequently, the dancer may also be seen from above or below in addition to spinning clockwise or counterclockwise, and facing toward or away from the observer. Upon inspection, one may notice that in Kayahara's original illusion, seeing the dancer spin clockwise is paired with constantly holding an elevated viewpoint and seeing the dancer from above. The opposite is also true; an observer maintaining a counterclockwise perception has assumed a viewpoint below the dancer. If observers report perceiving Kayahara's original silhouette as spinning clockwise more often than counterclockwise, there are two chief possibilities. They may have a bias to see her spinning clockwise, or they may have a bias to assume a viewpoint from above. To tease these two possibilities apart, the researchers created their own versions of Kayahara's silhouette illusion by recreating the dancer and varying the camera elevations. This allowed for clockwise-from-above (like Kayahara's original) and clockwise-from-below pairings. The results indicated that there was no clockwise bias, but rather a viewing-from-above bias. Furthermore, this bias was dependent upon camera elevation. In other words, the greater the camera elevation, the more often an observer saw the dancer from above. In popular psychology, the illusion has been incorrectly identified as a personality test that supposedly reveals which hemisphere of the brain is dominant in the observer. Under this wrong interpretation, it has been popularly called the "right brain–left brain test", and was widely circulated on the Internet during late 2007 to early 2008. A 2014 paper describes the brain activation related to the switching of perception. Utilizing fMRI in a volunteer capable of switching at will the direction of rotation, it was found that a part of the right parietal lobe is responsible for the switching. The authors relate this brain activation to the above described spontaneous brain fluctuations.
Bistable perception
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