Or because kids are very familiar with busses and adults are not.

Interestingly I got it instantly but I’ve used busses far more in my adult life than as a child

Why would kids be more familiar with busses than adults?

> Why are [large vehicles] so exciting to a kid? Perhaps it is obvious: they are loud, big, fast, complex, powerful. There is the element of danger. Adaptively, there must be a survival advantage for children who are curious about loud, large, fast beings and objects.

https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry...

I don’t see the correlation, sorry!

I’d expect an adult to be more familiar with a bus by virtue of having taken the bus more often than a child. Whether or not that’s exciting or just a mundane commute shouldn’t affect familiarity.

School buses are a staple of childhood, at least in the US.

Yeah, this bus is clearly intended to be a school bus but it’s missing too much detail. If the absence of the door is a valid clue, then so is the absence of the big red stop sign that is on the non-door-side.

Lay off the copium - busses don’t have red stop signs everywhere (for example they don’t have them here)

But they always have doors…

    The other day someone pointed at the open platform of RM1353 and asked me: did you take the doors off this bus? “No, it was built that way.” She looked amazed, and pleased.

https://www.theredbus.co.uk/blog/platform-sharing

they also always have mirrors, which is the first thing an adult would probably look for (since it applies more universally to vehicles)

Big red stop sign? Like on the bus?

Isn't this exactly the point? You look at this the analytical way, decide the bus doesn't have enough detail to be a realistic representation and stop there, maybe looking around for other clues. A very good example imo.

Sure, the bus could be in reverse, but it could also be a British bus driving in the US. Or we could be looking at a reflection of the bus. Or we could be looking at the reflection of a British bus going in reverse. This is not about determining the direction with 100% certainty. This is about having a clue at all which you can justify, which adults mostly don't.

I don't think the point is to nitpick how realistic the representation is or how fair the question is. The point is children react to the question differently from the way adults do. And that's true despite (or perhaps because of) what an adult thinks of the question.

But that's a different point to what GP was making. It wasn't that children answer differently to adults, it's that they get it 'right' more often than adults. Which is still more about ignorance allowing them to make the same assumptions as the questioner than thought processes. A child might not even be aware that people in other countries might drive on the other side of the road, and so be sure of their 'correct' answer, but most adults know that without knowing the location of this image, the question can't be answered.

EDIT: And if the question weren't ambiguous, you'd basically be telling people the answer, since as soon as you say "assume it's in the US", you give a massive clue that bilateral asymmetry is relevant.