#12. Challenge your brain with this visual logic brain teaser

In which direc­tion is the bus pic­tured below traveling?

school bus attention game

Do you know the answer?

The only pos­si­ble answers are “left” or “right.”

Still don’t know?

Keep read­ing for the answer and explanation…


When pre-school chil­dren in the US are shown this brain teas­er, they often answer “left.”

Why? “Because you can’t see the door.”

(This works in coun­tries where you dri­ve on the right side of the road, like the US and con­ti­nen­tal Europe; it would be the reverse in coun­tries where you dri­ve on the left side, such as the UK)

Feel pret­ty dumb now, don’t you? I did too!

This teas­er illus­trates a good con­cept about how our mem­o­ry works (and also our cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty). Imag­ine if our mem­o­ries were absolute­ly per­fect. On the one hand, you might have been able to answer this puz­zle cor­rect­ly, since you could com­pare this image to all the school bus images you have in your mind, and only the ones going left would match.

On the oth­er hand, imag­ine tru­ly remem­ber­ing every sin­gle detail of every sin­gle day of your life. It would be insur­mount­able to fil­ter through all that data retrieve use­ful information…you prob­a­bly would­n’t have been able to answer the ques­tion in hours or even days, try­ing to retrieve and process every sin­gle bus-relat­ed memory.

Think about that next time you com­plain about your memory…

Oth­er brain teasers for kids and adults in Sharp­Brains’ top 25 series:

 

PS: Enjoy these 50 brain teasers and games to test your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty. Free, and fun for chil­dren and adults of any age!

 

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72 Comments

  1. Ryanel Pongos on March 12, 2007 at 3:38

    I would like to com­ment on the answer to the puz­zle above. I think the answer “left” is not gen­er­aly true spe­cialy in coun­tries using right hand dri­ve vehi­cles. Mean­ing in those con­tries the vehi­cle above is going “right” not “left”.



  2. Caroline on March 12, 2007 at 9:06

    True enough Ryanel! The same log­ic in deter­min­ing the direc­tion applies though. Good point!



  3. r on September 6, 2007 at 7:02

    lol



  4. Pat on October 16, 2007 at 5:36

    The bus only has a chas­sis, some win­dows and wheels, with noth­ing to keep any­thing togeth­er, no bumper, no sus­pen­sion, no detail, and we’re sup­posed to assume there’s a door? It does­n’t look like a real bus, but it’s sup­posed to have a door like one? Also, what if it’s trav­el­ing in reverse? There is no right answer.



  5. Daniel on October 17, 2007 at 11:38

    I agree with Pat. With a sim­plis­tic pic­ture like that, the fact that there’s no door should­n’t real­ly be expect­ed to ring a bell. There’s no wind­shield either. There’s no headlights.

    Also, I find the state­ment about preschool­ers to be a bit sus­pect. It sounds like the type of state­ment that’s thrown into those annoy­ing for­ward­ed e‑mails but is real­ly just arbi­trar­i­ly added. So is it based on a study, or hearsay?



  6. Andrew on October 18, 2007 at 9:13

    True to form, the Amer­i­cans have for­got­ten that the inter­net is inter­na­tion­al. Well done you. Talk about brain train­ing… more like brain washing.



  7. saurabh on October 18, 2007 at 10:20

    I agree with the crit­i­cisms above; the absence of a door is hard­ly sig­nif­i­cant, and the anec­dote about “preschool­ers” being able to cor­rect­ly answer it seems dubi­ous at best (espe­cial­ly giv­en the lack of any iden­ti­fy­ing details). Also, my crit­i­cism has noth­ing to do with the fact that I did­n’t think of the door.



  8. Alvaro on October 18, 2007 at 6:55

    Why aren’t we empir­i­cal about this…does some­thing pre­vent us from test­ing this with pre-school­ers and see what they come up with? I have done it with a few, and that’s a com­mon observation.

    Also, giv­en that many of the peo­ple work­ing in Sharp­Brains-myself includ­ed- were born out of the US, I find some of the com­ments here pret­ty enter­tain­ing. Very stim­u­lat­ing to think what may explain them.



  9. dawn on November 2, 2007 at 4:50

    The absence of the door is whole­ly sig­nif­i­cant. The fact that the pic­ture is so sim­plis­tic is exact­ly how I was able to guess the answer. Look­ing at it I thought, okay, there isn’t enough in the pic­ture to tell the direc­tion so what’s miss­ing? A door. Must be on the oth­er side. Which means, in my coun­try, the bus is point­ing to the left.



  10. HiZaM on November 28, 2007 at 7:20

    in my coun­try they have doors on both sides



  11. Alan on November 28, 2007 at 10:13

    The pre-school­ers I tried it on did­n’t know their left from right, so I find that state­ment to be quite suspect.

    Even if one or two out of a group did know, I doubt most would.

    Alan.



  12. Pakotin on November 29, 2007 at 10:40

    and where is the door for the driver?



  13. Alvaro on November 29, 2007 at 11:41

    Pakotin: great ques­tion :-) now, remem­ber than most of us have pret­ty selec­tive atten­tion so we focus on our door…most like­ly only dri­vers would think of the dri­ver’s door as the first reac­tion to try to solve this.

    Every­one else: please remem­ber that the ben­e­fits of puz­zles like this is to get neu­rons fir­ing by try­ing a vari­ety of approach­es. Get­ting the “right” answer is sec­ondary. And, yes, we could dis­cuss what the right answer is, which depends by coun­try etc…



  14. Sanson Carrasco on November 29, 2007 at 11:59

    The rid­dle works only assuming:

    1. You are in a coun­try where peo­ple dri­ve on the right side of the road.

    2. Bus­es have no reverse.



  15. MICROmor on November 30, 2007 at 11:14

    any­way, even if we are look­ing at it from the left side, (the door being on the right side), there is no rule that says it’s not going on reverse gear…



  16. Ricardo Almazan on December 10, 2007 at 11:47

    Am I out­side the bus, or inside ?



  17. Alvaro on December 10, 2007 at 12:00

    Hel­lo Ricar­do, I would guess you are out­side, because that bus doen’t seem to have Inter­net connection…



  18. Mark on January 6, 2008 at 8:36

    Left



  19. Mitch on January 6, 2008 at 2:49

    Yea, i dont feel dumb for not get­ting this. Its a stylised draw­ing. If you had shown me that pic­ture and asked me what is this? I wouldve answered “some sort of vehi­cle”. I def­i­nite­ly would­nt have said “thats a bus”, you cant tell thats what it is. So IMO not real­ly a brain teas­er, more of a trick.



  20. Mike on January 6, 2008 at 3:03

    What about the Reflec­tive tape stip­ing around the escape win­dows ont he sides of the bus?How would Emer­gency per­son­ell find the cor­rect area to extract the pas­sen­gers, should the bus tip over in a hor­riff­ic traf­fic acci­dent!!! The CHILDREN.… Does no one think of the CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



  21. christian on January 7, 2008 at 2:22

    hola,
    es ver­dad, la puer­ta est del otro lado, por lo tan­to pare­cera ir hacia la izquier­da. Pero… y si va mar­cha atr¡s? Entonces ser­a derecha.



  22. Peanut on January 10, 2008 at 1:50

    Left because the door is on the oth­er side!!!



  23. Sally on January 22, 2008 at 7:04

    The draw­ing is a fixed, flat object and not mov­ing. So I have per­formed my brain fit­ness today. LOL sh



  24. Susan on January 22, 2008 at 7:08

    What if the door on the oth­er side is on the right end and not the left end. Then it’s going right, right? We assume there IS a door in the first place because we have not seen a bus that has no door. Then we must also assume it has all of the oth­er mark­ing such as wind­shield, etc. as well. What end they are on is decid­ed by which end the door is on.



  25. Lee on January 22, 2008 at 7:56

    Oh, good grief. Leave it to adults to make this com­pli­cat­ed. The puz­zle SAYS it’s a bus, so it’s a bus. And the dri­ver of pret­ty much all bus­es gets on the bus through the same door every­one else does.



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SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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