My Wife and My Mother-in-Law
"My Wife and My Mother-in-Law" is a famous ambiguous image, which can be perceived either as a young woman or an old woman (the "wife" and the "mother-in-law", respectively). The young woman appears with her face turned away from the viewer while the old woman appears in profile, so the part of the drawing that represents the young woman's ear is the old woman's eye; the young woman's chin is the old woman's nose; and the young woman's choker is the old woman's mouth.[1]
History
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American cartoonist William Ely Hill (1887–1962) published "My Wife and My Mother-in-Law" in Puck, an American humour magazine, on 6 November 1915, with the caption "They are both in this picture — Find them".[2] However, the oldest known form of this image is an 1888 German postcard.[3]
In 1930 Edwin Boring introduced the figure to psychologists in a paper titled "A new ambiguous figure", and it has since appeared in textbooks and experimental studies.[4][5]
References
- ^ McComas, William F. "Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of Theory-Laden Observation and Subjectivity: A Key NOS Notion". In McComas, William F. (ed.). Nature of Science in Science Instruction: Rationales and Strategies. Springer. pp. 141–158.
- ^ "My wife and my mother-in-law. They are both in this picture – find them". Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. Library of Congress. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
- ^ Weisstein, Eric W. "Young Girl-Old Woman Illusion". MathWorld. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
- ^ Botwinick, Jack (June 1961). "Husband and Father-in-Law—A Reversible Figure". The American Journal of Psychology. 74 (2). doi:10.2307/1419424.
- ^ Nicholls, Mike; Churches, Owen; Loetscher, Tobias (23 August 2018). "Perception of an ambiguous figure is affected by own-age social biases". Scientific Reports. 8 (1). doi:10.1038/s41598-018-31129-7. PMC 6107502.
See also
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