You enter a new room for a specific purpose, and when you cross the threshold, you can’t remember what you came to do? Do not panic. It is simply the “doorway effect”. We explain to you.
This has happened to all of us. We move from room to room to complete a task. Once there, it’s total amnesia: impossible to remember why we came. It sometimes takes a few seconds to finally regain consciousness. Although disturbing, this phenomenon is not, however, alarming. It would even be quite common.
The doors, at the origin of our oblivion?
To understand this mechanism, researchers at the University of Notre Dame in the United States (Indiana) have developed simple but effective work. The first experience, presented in the form of a virtual reality computer game, consisted of transporting an object in an opaque box from point A to point B. During this trajectory, some guinea pigs had to go through a door, others not. .
The 55 participants then answered a question: what object are you carrying? The second exercise consisted of reproducing exactly the same game but in a real situation. The result: in both situations, people who walked through a door had more difficulty answering this one and only question (longer response time, less details and more errors).
A physical and mental breaking point!
For the scientists behind this work, doors are a kind of breaking point between one room and another, an environment from another. Thus, during the passage, the brain integrates new information about the new space, at the risk of eliminating the previous indications. This is why, most of the time, the more anecdotal the thing to do and / or go for, the more it escapes us.
Entering or leaving through a door is perceived by the brain as a border between events. The brain separates activities into distinct episodes and categorizes them. This makes it harder to remember a decision made in another room because it was compartmentalized.
How to avoid the doorway?
To no longer fall victim to the door effect, there is a foolproof method. When traveling, redouble your attention and concentration on the task at hand and forget about the rest (environment, telephone or conversations). Or, failing that, remove all the doors in your apartment!
Reference: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160307-why-does-walking-through-doorways-make-us-forget
