But just then there was a slight altercation between Master Tommy and Master Jacky
{ 1. Joseph Jastrow’s Duck-Rabbit, 1899, based on drawing published in German humor magazine Fliegende Blatter, 1892 | 2. Taxidermed rabbit–duck | via Richard Wiseman }
I noticed a depiction of the famous “duck-rabbit” figure, described as an “illusion” and attributed to Wittgenstein (Malach, Levy, & Hasson, 2002).
Technically, the duck-rabbit figure is an ambiguous (or reversible, or bistable) figure, not an illusion (Peterson, Kihlstrom, Rose, & Glisky, 1992). The two classes of perceptual phenomena have quite different theoretical implications. From a constructivist point of view, many illusions illustrate the role of unconscious inferences in perception, while the ambiguous figures illustrate the role of expectations, world-knowledge, and the direction of attention (Long & Toppino, 2004).For example, children tested on Easter Sunday are more likely to see the figure as a rabbit; if tested on a Sunday in October, they tend to see it as a duck or similar bird (Brugger & Brugger, 1993).
But the more important point of this letter concerns attribution: the duck-rabbit was “originally noted” not by Wittgenstein, but rather by the American psychologist Joseph Jastrow in 1899.
