I sometimes use the expression “senior moment” when I’ve temporarily forgotten something. I’m rationalizing my memory loss by the fact that I’m older than I used to be.
Do you ever forget the reason why you walked into a room seconds after you enter, even though you know you are there for a reason? You stand in the doorway wondering, “I know I came in here for something! What the heck was it?”
If you answered yes, you may go as far as to rationalize that the reason it happens is that our lives are so overburdened. We buzz around like Red Bull-caffeinated kids crossing things off our mental checklists. We have so many things to remember: doctor’s appointments, tee times, Meals on Wheels, meetings, etc. So we walk into a room to do some super-important task, and then we can’t for the love of God remember why we’re there!
In one of my many forays into the wonderful world of the worldwide Web, I bumped into a really fun website called unwords.com. On its homepage, Unwords says, “Changing the English language one word at a time. Welcome to the new Unwords.com! We’re still making English your language. Make up words for those hard to express things and ideas in your head. With our new website, it’s never been easier to make new unwords! Unwords.com makes it possible for you to share your words with the world. Take a look around our dictionary and see for yourself.”
So I did. I clicked through a number of random pages. On the “D” page, I found “Destinesia: (n.) Going upstairs or downstairs and being unable to remember why.” I like that, a combination of destination and amnesia.
Perfect for the concept of not remembering why I went into a room. It could probably be called roomnesia, too!
So, it’s annoying, right? But as it turns out, it’s pretty common. I found an article about a recent study published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology that validates this kind of forgetfulness and says the trigger may be as benign as passing through a doorway. How about that?
The study authors refer to the phenomena as the “location-updating effect,” which suggests there may be a decline in memory when you move from one location to another. And the “location change” doesn’t have to be dramatic; walking into the next room is all it takes.
The study’s working theory was that when you enter a new room or environment, your brain works to update your understanding of what’s going on around you. As it turns out, I guess, this is a lot of work (the authors say it’s “effortful”) for your buzzing brain.
Psychologists who study memories believe we stack them in our brains in a way that is analogous to the chapters of a book. Stuff that’s stored in a current chapter is much easier to recall than information stored in a previous one. They call these discrete sections “memory episodes.”
The research suggests that the simple act of walking through a doorway creates a new memory episode, thereby making it harder for us to recall aspects from a previous episode (such as why we came into the room)!
I read about another study done at Notre Dame that talked about this phenomenon as experiencing an “event boundary.” Their study concluded that walking through doorways causes memory to lapse. From that study: “Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away.”
That means that by the time you’ve walked into the pantry, your brain has already moved on from the thought that led you in there, and you can’t always effectively backtrack. “Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized,” according to the ND study.
So, how can you deal with this “doorway effect”? Maybe you can mentally repeat the decision or action as you enter the room, announce what you’re about to do. This “doorway effect” appears to be quite general, so maybe you can avoid doorways? We’ve been thinking about downsizing. Maybe that’s a good idea: fewer doorways, fewer rooms to forget things in!
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