Oculomotor scannıng patterns durıng perceptıon of an ambıgıous pıcture: “my wıfe and my mother ın law”

S. Ilhan*, E.Genç*, A. Atci*, B. Ilhan**

Selcuk University School of Medicine

*Department of Neurology

**Department of Biophysics

Konya, Turkey

Perception is multistable during viewing an ambigious figure. One of the most well-known of these figures is Boring’s young /old woman, also known as my wife and my mother-in-law. Garcia-Perez has studied the visual inhomogeneity and eye movements in multistable perception of the figure.

Our study examined the eye movements of 148 normal subjects during the inspection of “my wife and my mother–in-law” by means of the Video Eye Trace system. Subjects were instructed to view the picture until they recognize it. The picture was presented in two different forms: 1- in its original form, 2- with a contrast change on the hair area. Each subject started oculomotor scanning from one of the three different positions on the screen; the spot in the center, the spots on the right and left boundaries. Subjects were required to fixate on one of the three spots until the test pattern appeared.

We concluded that scanpath formation and perception were influenced by contrast change but not by starting position of the eyes. Inspection of fixation points revealed that the greatest number of fixations was spent on the left half of the picture if the subject reported to see the young woman and on the right half if the old woman was seen.