Walking through doorways makes you forget stuff

[Veho]

Ever walk into a room and forget why you're there?

New research from University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses.

“Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” Radvansky explains.

“Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.”

Conducting three experiments in both real and virtual environments, Radvansky’s subjects – all college students – performed memory tasks while crossing a room and while exiting a doorway.

In the first experiment, subjects used a virtual environment and moved from one room to another, selecting an object on a table and exchanging it for an object at a different table. They did the same thing while simply moving across a room but not crossing through a doorway.

Radvansky found that the subjects forgot more after walking through a doorway compared to moving the same distance across a room, suggesting that the doorway or “event boundary” impedes one’s ability to retrieve thoughts or decisions made in a different room.

The second experiment in a real-world setting required subjects to conceal in boxes the objects chosen from the table and move either across a room or travel the same distance and walk through a doorway. The results in the real-world environment replicated those in the virtual world: walking through a doorway diminished subjects’ memories.

The final experiment was designed to test whether doorways actually served as event boundaries or if one’s ability to remember is linked to the environment in which a decision – in this case, the selection of an object – was created. Previous research has shown that environmental factors affect memory and that information learned in one environment is retrieved better when the retrieval occurs in the same context. Subjects in this leg of the study passed through several doorways, leading back to the room in which they started. The results showed no improvements in memory, suggesting that the act of passing through a doorway serves as a way the mind files away memories.

Source.

What about revolving doors?

 

[Vulpes Abnocto]

Sounds like a problem in loading. Should have been addressed in the beta.

Even deities have this error, it seems. (Portal of plenary indulgence. See also: "Dogma" )

 

[Foxi4]

Is there a specified width the doors should have to counter this issue? Should we now live without doors, exiting out houses using windows? Does standing in the doorframe cause a brain buffer overflow?

We will never know, because there is no application for this discovery and I assume it will not be further investigated.

 

[Necron]

mmmkay
Probably they should make more useful test that this.

 

[nryn99]

wish it was just doors that make me forget things.
i always forget something from even seconds ago, sometimes i start to do something or go somewhere then i'd stop and think "what was it that i was going to do?"

 

[Veho]

We will never know, because there is no application for this discovery and I assume it will not be further investigated.

It's a new insight on how our brains process and store information. It seems that going from one room to another triggers the same process that sleep does, where the brain filters the short term memory, commits important stuff to longer-term memory and gets rid of what it deems unimportant. Doors do that on a smaller scale. We used to think that this process was ongoing and continuous while we are awake, but it appears some things trigger a more rapid (and almost instant) response.

The next step is to define "room" and "door" from the brain's perspective, and find out what other transitions trigger the same process. If we think of the other room as a new surrounding or a new situation, then that means our brain does a soft reboot every time it encounters a new situation, probably in order to clear up resources. Finding out what it considers a new situation would help understand how the brain works.

 

[Gahars]

That... well that certainly explains a lot.

 

[Rydian]

Makes sense to me.

Unfortunately as a canine, I shall now bark at doors and keep you up all night because I think they are a threat.

 

[Densetsu]

I think I just need to live in a single, giant room then.

But what if I need to go outside?

Maybe I'll just be homeless

 

[s4mid4re]

Just wondering: What if you were to go through a door with your eyes closed? My point is that, if they visually don't acknowledge crossing a door, would the results change?

 

[Rydian]

I think I just need to live in a single, giant room then.

But what if I need to go outside?

Maybe I'll just be homeless

Could also use transport tubes. =D

Just wondering: What if you were to go through a door with your eyes closed? My point is that, if they visually don't acknowledge crossing a door, would the results change?

If it's your own home you'd still know you're going from one room to another.

 

[awssk8er]

Makes sense.

Just wondering: What if you were to go through a door with your eyes closed? My point is that, if they visually don't acknowledge crossing a door, would the results change?

I could be wrong, but I think it's more of being in a new room than actually walking through the door. I feel like because your environment changes, you thought process/memory changes.

Like I said, I could be completely wrong.

 

[Hop2089]

Time for teleportation to come in existence in the real world, it would prevent this altogether.

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

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