page_title: Ambiguous image
hierarchical_section_title: Ambiguous image
caption_attribution_description: English: Image taken from (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rubin1.jpg) and edited to show the negative space.
context_page_description: Ambiguous images or reversible figures are visual forms which create ambiguity by exploiting graphical similarities and other properties of visual system interpretation between two or more distinct image forms. These are famous for inducing the phenomenon of multistable perception. Multistable perception is the occurrence of an image being able to provide multiple, although stable, perceptions. Classic examples of this are the rabbit-duck and the Rubin vase. Ambiguous images are important to the field of psychology because they are often research tools used in experiments. There is varying evidence on whether ambiguous images can be represented mentally, but a majority of research has theorized that they cannot be properly represented mentally.
  The rabbit-duck image seems to be one of the earliest of this type; first published in Fliegende Blätter, a German humor magazine; the My Wife and My Mother-in-Law drawing, which dates from a German postcard of 1888, is another early example.
context_section_description: Ambiguous images or reversible figures are visual forms which create ambiguity by exploiting graphical similarities and other properties of visual system interpretation between two or more distinct image forms. These are famous for inducing the phenomenon of multistable perception. Multistable perception is the occurrence of an image being able to provide multiple, although stable, perceptions. Classic examples of this are the rabbit-duck and the Rubin vase. Ambiguous images are important to the field of psychology because they are often research tools used in experiments. There is varying evidence on whether ambiguous images can be represented mentally, but a majority of research has theorized that they cannot be properly represented mentally.
  The rabbit-duck image seems to be one of the earliest of this type;  first published in Fliegende Blätter, a German humor magazine (Oct. 23, 1892, p. 147); the My Wife and My Mother-in-Law drawing, which dates from a German postcard of 1888, is another early example.
caption: An example of Rubin's vase
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