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For the optical illusion survey, I used the very popular picture of the two faces and the vase to collect results on what was seen, and a possible explanation for what was seen. I showed it to several people on my floor, and in my Spanish class, and the results varied rather greatly from person to person. I decided to pick a rather popular image to use in this survey because prior to our class discussion I had not really considered what was happening behind the image to create an optical allusion. However, after learning more about optical illusions I thought it would be interesting to collect the opinions of other people with respect to the image.

The results that I collected showed that the image that was seen first varied greatly amongst the people that I asked. For example, while most of the people said that they saw the two people looking “face-to face at one another”, some first saw the vase, and one of the participants first saw a goblet.

I asked the participants if the original image that they saw was vague or definite and I found it interesting that all of the participants responded that the image that they saw was definite. I also asked if they saw more than one image in the photo, however, and all of the participants answered yes.

Lastly, I asked the participants if they could elaborate on their reasoning, if any behind what they saw, or if they could give a description of what they saw and how they went about seeing it. Some people responded that they felt like their eyes were sliding out of focus when they tried to see both of the images.I researched this at this is called multistability or literally multiple perception. Other people said that what they saw was just immediate and there was no reasoning, at least not apparent to them, for why they saw what they saw. Finally, some people responded that they saw the people or the vase first, then, after focusing, were able to see the faces of the two people.