What Determines How We Resolve Ambiguous Perceptions?

Situations demanding interpretations of ambiguous circumstances are ubiquitous, but individuals vary considerably in how they resolve these ambiguities. Differences in the ways people disambiguate stimuli have largely been thought to be explained by dissimilarities in their prior experiences. To ascertain how much genetics might also shape disambiguation, investigators in China studied 82 monozygotic and 78 dizygotic twin pairs as they interpreted ambiguous animations presented on a computer screen.

One series of tests presented the barest outline of a moving human figure, as defined by 15 points of light; participants noted whether the figure seemed to be approaching or receding. In another series, the point-light outlines were of an inanim…