When reading about the topic of false memories and and the misinformation effect I thought of a docu-series that I saw on netflix called ‘Unbelievable.’ The 2 season series is based on a true story about a serial rapist who crossed state lines and police departments in different areas were trying to find him. One report in particular reminded me of this story specifically because of one girl’s (Marie Adler) experience when talking to the police. When she first reported the incident, they obviously took notes and created the report. When they talked to her again, details of her story changed and there was conflict in some of the stuff she had originally said, which created an issue with the police. They continued to question her among several different people and each time her story was different, and this in the end led to her report being dismissed and the officers said she had made up the story for attention. In the second season, in a different state, another girl reported an incident that had happened to her and her story lined up each time she recounted it to police. As officers were investigating her case, in a different state, they had found the man who had committed the crime, and had found photos that he took of his victims. When they ran the photos through CODIS, the original case- with Marie Adler- had popped up because of the name and photo. The police then went back to Marie and had to apologize to her for saying that she made up her story.

I think this is a really good example of how eyewitness and false memories can have a really big impact on one’s experiences and life. In this case, a false memory was created when Marie was going through a traumatic experience because that was the brain’s way of protecting her.

This week something that I thought was really interesting was about was looking at the two processing streams,a dn the differences between the two. The landmark discrimination task made me think about my personal experiences with navigating my environment.

The difference between these two streams is using identification versus location, and as I was thinking about this concept, I realized that I typically think about things in the sense of proximity and relation to location rather than a physical thing. For example, when I think about leaving the house for work, I don’t think about the fact that I have to take certain roads and turns, but I more so think about how long will this way take me versus a different way, and the proximity to what is more practical from where I am at currently. These two ways look different if i’m leaving from home or school for example.

I also thought about the fact that I only moved to PA a few years ago, and I grew up in the west coast, so everything was extremely unfamiliar to me beyond just the city I was living in now, but also the region of the country. I used specific buildings or recognizable street corners to make my way around the city for the first few months to familiarize myself with the area I was in rather than relying on a GPS.

I think there it is interesting to look at the different ways that every individual makes sense of their environment and how they familiarize themselves with new areas as well.