Why we forget things midway

If you forget what you were going to do, or get, or find, after entering a room, then blame your doorways. Apparently, entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away...

If you forget what you were going to do, or get, or find, after entering a room, then blame your doorways. University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky has suggested 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 explained.

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"Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized," she stated.



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 study was published recently in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.