We have all had moments where we enter a room to get something, only to forget why we were there in the first place.
A study led by Professor Gabriel Radvansky of the University of Notre Dame suggests that these bouts of forgetfulness could be caused by something as mundane as walking through a doorway.
Previous studies using virtual settings have found that a change in location affects our memory. Researchers discovered that the shifts from one place to another function as “event boundaries” in our minds that are like barriers, and these barriers separate information into sections as we move through environments.
When we walk into a new place, our mind takes in a vast amount of information about the new surroundings and stores away previous information, thus making it difficult for us to recall what we were just thinking. This is known as the location-updating effect.
Virtual versus Actual
As the earlier studies were carried out in virtual locations, Prof Radvansky and his colleagues conducted experiments to find if the updating effect affects our memory differently in a real environment.
One of the experiments used virtual environments, much like the game Counter-strike
In one experiment, participants were engaged in a simulated setting that’s similar to the game Counter-strike. They used the arrow keys on the keyboard to move between rooms while holding objects, and were asked to remember what they were holding. The participants also carried the objects from one table to another in the same virtual room. Another experiment was similar to the previous one described, except instead of a virtual setting, participants performed the tasks in a real environment.
The results for both experiments were the same: participants became more forgetful after going through a doorway than when walking across a room. The researchers also found that the more doorways people walked through, the harder it was to remember prior thoughts.
Prof Radvansky said that understated shifts in location — subtle moves such as walking from a garden onto a road — affect the memory as well. “We have another study where people were flying planes in a video game, and the change in terrain acted like an event boundary.”
Better to forget?
The location-updating effect, though frustrating, could actually prevent us from becoming distracted.
“We often need to do different things in different settings,” said Prof Radvansky. “So this may help people disengage from doing one thing, and keep prior thoughts from intruding on doing a new thing.”
Main image author’s own
Other image by Tamahiri Tamma on Flickr
Radvansky GA, Krawietz SA, & Tamplin AK (2011). Walking through doorways causes forgetting: Further explorations. Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 64 (8), 1632-45 PMID: 21563019