Ever wondered whether you should be considered old or young? The picture shown above depicts two women – one young woman an old lady. It is however very hard to see both at the same time – and for some of us, once you have seen one, it becomes close to impossible to see the other one. So when yesterday I read that there were people seeing an old lady in the picture I thought they are lying. But the number of those who were saying that the only thing they can see is an old lady meant there must be something I am missing – so I kept checking, re-checking – as I twisted and turned around my phone to view the picture from different angles – but I still couldn’t see the old lady in the picture. That got me frustrated.
Then I found an article in I Fucking Love Science that talked about the picture. According to the article, Psychology professors in Australia conducted a study aimed at figuring out the type of people who saw what image in the picture, and their conclusion was that age had a lot to do with it. “While most participants saw the younger woman first, it could be because many of the participants were on the younger side. When the researchers separated the oldest 10% and the youngest 10% of those surveyed, they found that the older set saw the older woman first, and the younger set the young woman”.
Reading the article didn’t help me to see the old lady immediately – but when I tried to use the article’s guideline that “the young woman’s chin doubles as the older woman’s nose, and the old woman’s chin is also the young woman’s chest”, I managed to finally see the old woman. The problem with seeing the old woman is that now I can’t stop seeing her.
Talking about things that are influenced by age, in May 2018 an audio file went viral because different people heard different things. There were those who heard laurel whereas there are others who heard yanny. Todate, I still can’t hear yanny in that audio file no matter how I try to tweak the audio frequency. My wife however who can hear yanny at the audio’s normal frequency, can also hear yanny when the frequency (pitch) is lowered. According to experts who analyzed the audio, young people are more likely to hear yanny whereas more older people whose auditory system has aged can’t pick the higher pitched yanny.
These two items therefore tells me that I can’t trust them to tell me whether or not I am already old. According to the picture, I am definitely in the young category – but the audio file is still here to remind me that I am an old ancestor.
