Hey Averyone - I've got an idea!! !

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Hi all,

Well, you know those 'magic eye' pictures where you stare at them slightly shifting your focus and then it becomes 3D and you can see a shape protruding from the image? Well, you're supposed to see the image protruding from the image but whenever I did it, the shape didn't protrude for me. It appears to be sunken below the surface of the image - said another way, I saw the images reversed to how everyone else saw them (how you're supposed to see them)

My (then) partner and I couldn't work out why she always saw them like normal people do and I always saw it in reverse. We concluded that my brain was different to other people's. That was before we knew I was an Aspie.

I was just thinking 'about it and now, in hindsight, I was wondering if it was the fact that I have an ASD.

Can other people do a search for 'magic eye pictures' on Google Images, stare at a few until the image changes and tell me if it protrudes (what is normal and how they're supposed to go) or inverted like I see them. This may become a sort of diagnostic tool if I'm right.

Wouldn't it be weird?!?!

I see them protruding when I do it the normal way - staring closely then moving the image away. I used to have a hard time getting it like that though. However, I found that if I simply sat there and crossed my eyes, then slowly uncrossed them, when the two images became one, it would reversed, as you describe it.

Since you see it in reverse the regular way, I'm wondering if you'd see it protrude by doing it cross eyed.

Nope! I've tried every way I can and it's always inverted for me.

I see you're "Have Aspergers -Diagnosed" also.

Oh well, there goes that theory.

What's wrong with me then?

I always see them sunken into the background. It is probably simply a question of technique i.e. if your focus is behind the image that is where you see the layer appear and if you focus before the image that is where it appears. It could also simply be like the wire-frame cube image that appears behind then can flick to appearing forward then back again etc. I very much doubt the location of the image is AS related.

Please be aware that spectacles can change the way 3D images are seen, for example I can't watch a 3D movie whilst wearing glasses as the 3D effect just doesn't work.

No, I never used to wear glasses but I do now. I still see them inverted

Depending on the image (may be a good idea to provide a weblink to one) you can view it either way. Magic eye images generally (not always) rely on hidden ambiguous 3-D images. The ambiguity factor lies in the projection which typically can be viewed either as projected forward or sunken back depending on the perspective of the viewer. Psychologists have proven you can use the simple power of suggestion to get a viewer to engage only one perspective if that is all they are expecting.

I think you may have first seen the magic eye image as sunken and your visual cortex simply fixed this viewpoint in your long term memory as sunken whenever you saw similarly ambiguous images later on. No need to propose Aspergers here, just simple individual depth/image perception.

1) I'm not sure if I have Asperger's.

2) I've searched "magic eye pictures" and I haven't seen any 3D.

3) I get a 3D effect when I stare to my grandma's floor.

4) Always contrast a diagnostic experiment with the allistic population.

I never see those things in 3D - I must take far too much literally - even images

I couldn't either at first, and if it wasn't for my partner's determination for me to get it, I still wouldn't be able to - but it backfired on her because it annoyed her even more that I saw them in reverse than the fact that I couldn't do it at all.

Those have always lifted out for me.
Was able to do it easily first time because have always been doing that starting at things with a pattern.

That's the way I see them. Until right now I thought that was the way you were supposed to see them.

Last edited by Stannis on 09 Mar 2014, 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I always see them as protruding outward toward me, instead of sunken in. But I have a different question: the only way I can view these magic eye images, is by crossing my eyes, i.e. having one eye's focal point differ from the other's. Is that what you're supposed to do, or do I just have messed up focus? I am wearing glasses, by the way, and have done so since the age of 7.

possibly this is my problem - I am seriously visually impaired (without my glasses I even have trouble getting around my own home) - I have tried everything and can't make them work

I can't make them work.

Also I cannot see 3D through 3D glasses. All I see is red and green lines.

I have seen them before, but I can't always get them to work.