Precedents

To create my project, I explored research surrounding the question: How accurate is memory and can a person's memory be led astray? I looked into Julia Shaw's study on Memory Illusion and constructing false memories of committing crimes. Her research and experiments have shown that adults can be convinced in a few hours that they committed crimes in their teenage years, while in reality they never have. In one study, 30 college students were tested to see if they could implant false memories of committing crimes. The students went through three 40-minute interviews. In the first interview, the researchers told the students about two events that happened in their past with one being true and the other completely made up with a few true events from the student's life mixed in. In the second and third interview, the students were asked to recall as much about both events as they could. The results of the experiment showed that of the 30 participants that were told they committed crimes as a teenager, 21 developed a false memory of the crime. This experiment shows just how fragile and easily manipulated our memories are. From this general concept, I attempted to create a working project to further explore this idea and challenge people to see how accurate our memory truly is.

I got the specific idea for having people repeat a light pattern from the game, Simon Says.  This game works by showing people a light pattern and having them repeat it back correctly for as long as they can.  I included a picture of the game below: