Visual Thinking Research

When I first started looking at this image of these three rings I was looking for something to jump out at me right away.  I was using a pattern seeking method to find my solution.  I started with a simple finding technique hoping the incorrect pattern would jump right out at me.  When that didn't work I used the long matching technique to try to identify where the three rings differ.  I eventually used the rotation technique to really find that the ring on the left is the one that is not the same because one triangle is facing a different way.

  When i handed this puzzle to my wife she was able to spot the difference right away.  She was able to use the finding technique and closed the problem in no time.  She told me that the differences popped out at her in only a few seconds.  I believe she used the categorizing technique by recognizing the common features of the pattern. I was pretty shocked how quickly she discovered the problem knowing it took me several minutes.  It was interesting because she used a totally different way of thinking than I did.

In this image you have to find the two umbrellas that are the same.  You can rotate them but not mirror them.  This exercise took me quite a while to figure out, again used the process of elimination to pinpoint the two correct images.  Once again I started out using the finding technique.  I thought I could just stare at the image long enough and it would just pop out at me.  When that didn't work I started using the long matching technique to weed out the umbrellas I knew were not going to work.  Every time i thought I had a match i would find something out of place.  It wasn't until I started rotating the images that I was able to discover which two they were.  

This puzzle also stumped my wife for a long time.  After a while she had to put it down and wait a few minutes before attempting it again.  She finally found the two by a process of elimination.  She also used the finding technique thinking that if she looked hard enough the solution would present itself. She then used the categorizing technique to find common features between the two correct umbrellas.  I eventually let her know that you need to rotate the image in your head to really discover the two that are matching.  The first time she guessed she was incorrect, but on the second attempt she finally got it.  I found it interesting she was able to find the solution for the first puzzle right away but the second puzzle stumped her.