What Did You See First? A Visual-Perception Prompt

Quiz: What Do You Know About Two-Way Pictures?

Ten questions about the famous drawings that can be seen in two ways, and what they reveal about how we look. Whatever you saw first, there is no wrong first impression here.

1. The famous Rubin vase can be seen either as a vase or as...

   • A young woman and an old woman
   • A staircase going up and down
   • Two faces in profile
   • A duck and a rabbit

   The white vase and the dark background swap roles, turning into two faces looking at each other.

2. The Rubin vase is named after which psychologist?

   • Wilhelm Wundt
   • Edgar Rubin
   • Sigmund Freud
   • Carl Jung

   Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin used the figure in his work on figure and ground in the 1910s.

3. In the classic duck-rabbit drawing, the duck's bill doubles as which part of the rabbit?

   • Its ears
   • Its tail
   • Its paws
   • Its nose

   Turn your attention around and the long bill becomes a pair of rabbit ears.

4. In the young woman / old woman drawing, the young woman's chin becomes the old woman's...

   • Ear
   • Hat
   • Hand
   • Nose

   The young woman's chin and jawline double as the old woman's large nose.

5. Why does the Necker cube, a simple wire-frame drawing of a cube, seem to flip?

   • It is printed in two colours
   • It is drawn with curved lines
   • Its front and back faces can swap places in depth
   • Its lines slowly change length

   The drawing gives no depth cue for which face is nearer, so the brain alternates between two solutions.

6. What is the term for telling an object apart from its background?

   • Parallax
   • Figure-ground perception
   • Colour constancy
   • An afterimage

   Figure-ground perception is the process the Rubin vase plays with so cleverly.

7. Which school of psychology is known for studying how we see whole shapes rather than separate parts?

   • Gestalt psychology
   • Behaviourism
   • Psychoanalysis
   • Positive psychology

   Gestalt psychologists in early 20th-century Germany studied how perception organises parts into wholes.

8. Seeing a face in a cloud, a car front or an electric socket is called...

   • Synaesthesia
   • Déjà vu
   • Colour blindness
   • Pareidolia

   Pareidolia is the tendency to see meaningful patterns, especially faces, in random shapes.

9. Which Renaissance-era painter made portraits out of fruit, vegetables and flowers?

   • Rembrandt
   • Vermeer
   • Giuseppe Arcimboldo
   • Leonardo da Vinci

   Giuseppe Arcimboldo's 16th-century composite heads are an early ancestor of today's double-image art.

10. When most people look at a two-way picture, what happens?

    • The picture slowly changes colour
    • They see one reading at a time, and it flips back and forth
    • They see both readings fused together
    • They can only ever see one reading

    Ambiguous figures are usually perceived one interpretation at a time, alternating, which is why they feel like they flip.